EIGHBORS 

UNKNOWN 



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Copyright N°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



Neighbors Unknown 



BY 



CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 

AUTHOR OF " KINGS IN EXILE," " THE BACKWOODSMEN " 
"THE HOUSE IN THE WATER," ETC. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1911 

All rights reserved 

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Copyright, 1909 and 1910, 
By THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

AND 

By THE ASSOCIATED SUNDAY MAGAZINES, INCORPORATED. 

Copyright, 1911, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 191 1. 



Norfoooti $«S8 

J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



*gCLA280049 C 



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PATRICIA 



CONTENTS 



On the Roof of the World 

Black Swamp .... 

The Isle of Birds 

The Antlers of the Caribou 

The Sentry of the Sedge-Flats 

A Tree-top Aeronaut . 

The Theft ..... 

The Tunnel Runners . 

A Torpedo in Feathers 

How a Cat played Robinson Crusoe 

Little Bull of the Barrens . 

The Tiger of the Sea 

Gray Lynx's Last Hunting . 

Mothers of the North 



PAGE 

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ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 



On the Roof of the World 

IT seemed to be the very roof of the world, 
all naked to the outer cold, this flat vast 
of solitude, dimly outspread beneath the Arctic 
night. A line of little hills, mere knobs and 
hummocks, insignificant under the bitter star- 
light, served to emphasize the immeasurable and 
shelterless flatness of the surrounding expanse. 
Somewhere beneath the unfeatured levels the sea 
ended and the land began, but over all lay the 
monotony of ridged ice and icy, wind-scourged 
snow. The wind, which for weeks without a 
pause had torn screaming across the nakedness, 
had now dropped into calm ; and with the calm 
there seemed to come in the unspeakable cold of 
space. 

Suddenly a sharp noise, beginning in the dim- 
ness far to the left of the Little Hills, ran snapping 
past them and died off abruptly in the distance 
to the right. It was the ice, thickened under 
that terrific cold, breaking in order to readjust it- 
self to the new pressure. There was a moment 
of strange muttering and grinding. Then, again, 
the stillness. 

3 



4 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

Yet, even here on the roof of the world, which 
seemed as if all the winds of eternity had swept it 
bare, there was life, life that clutched and clung 
savagely. Away to the right of the Little Hills, 
something moved, prowling slowly among the long 
ridges of the ice. It was a gaunt, white, slouch- 
ing, startling shape, some seven or eight feet in 
length, and nearly four in height, with heavy 
shoulders, and a narrow, flat-browed head that 
hung low and swayed menacingly from side to 
side as it went. Had the light been anything 
more than the wide glimmer of stars, it would 
have shown that this lonely, prowling shape of 
white had a black-tipped muzzle, black edges 
to the long slit of its jaws, and little, cruel eyes 
with lids outlined in black. From time to time 
the prowler raised his head, sniffed with dilating 
nostrils, and questioned with strained ears the 
deathly silence. It was a polar bear, an old male, 
too restless and morose to content himself with 
sleeping away the terrible polar winter in a snow- 
blanketed hole. 

From somewhere far off to seaward came across 
the stillness a light sound, the breaking of thin 
ice, the tinkle of splashings frozen as they fell. 
The great white bear understood that sound. 
He had been waiting for it. The seals were 
breaking their way up into their air-holes to 



ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 5 

breathe — those curious holes which form here 
and there in the ice-fields over moving water, as 
if the ocean itself had need of keeping in touch 
with upper air for its immeasurable breathing. 
At a great pace, but noiselessly as a drifting wraith 
of snow, the bear went towards the sound. Then 
suddenly he dropped flat and seemed to vanish. 
In reality he was crawling, crawling steadily 
towards the place of the air-holes. But so smooth 
was his movement, so furtive, and so fitted to 
every irregularity of the icy surface, that if the 
eye once lost him it might strive in vain to pick 
him up again. 

Nearer, nearer he crept, till at last, lying 
motionless with his lean muzzle just over the 
crest of the ice-ridge, he could make out the dark 
shapes of the seals, vague as shadows, emerging 
for a few moments to sprawl upon the edge of 
the ice. Every few seconds one would slip into 
the water again, while another would awkwardly 
scramble forth. In that phenomenal cold it was 
necessary for them to take heed to the air-holes, 
lest these should get sealed up and leave them to 
drown helplessly under the leagues of solid ice- 
field. These breathing-spells in the upper air, 
out here on the world's roof, were their moments 
of greatest peril. Close to the edge of the hole 
they sprawled ; and always one or another kept 



6 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

anxious watch, scanning with mild, bright eyes 
the menacing solitude, wherein they seemed the 
only things alive. 

About this time, from one of a group of tiny, 
snow-covered mounds huddled along the base of 
the Little Hills, emerged a man. He crawled 
forth on all fours from the tunnel of his doorway, 
and stood up and peered about him. His squat 
figure was clothed and hooded in furs. His little, 
twinkling eyes, after clearing themselves from the 
smoke and smart of the thick air within the igloo, 
could see further through the gloom than even 
the eyes of the bear. He noted the fall of the 
wind, the savage intensity of the cold, and his 
eyes brightened with hope. He had no fear of 
the cold, but he feared the hunger which was 
threatening the lonely village. During the long 
rage of the wind, the supply of food in his igloo 
had run low. He welcomed a cold which would 
close up most of the seals' breathing-holes, and 
force more numerous visitors to the few holes 
that they could keep open. For some moments 
he stood motionless, peering and listening as the 
bear had done. Suddenly he too caught that far- 
off light crashing of brittle ice. On the instant 
he turned and crawled hastily back into the hut. 

A moment later he reappeared, carrying two 
weapons, besides the long knife stuck in his girdle. 



ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 7 

One of these was an old Hudson Bay Company's 
musket. The other was a spear of spliced bone, 
with a steel head securely lashed to it. Powder 
and ball for the musket were much too precious 
to be expended, except in some emergency wherein 
the spear might fail. Without waiting for a repe- 
tition of the sounds, he started off at once unerr- 
ingly in the direction whence they had come. 
He knew that air-hole ; he could find it in the 
delusive gloom without the aid of landmark. For 
some way he went erect and in haste, though as 
soundlessly as the bear. Then, throwing himself 
flat, he followed exactly the bear's tactics, till, at 
last, peering cautiously over a jagged ice-ridge, 
he, too, could make out the quarry watchfully 
coming and going about the brink of the air-hole. 
From this point onward the man's movements 
were so slow as to be almost imperceptible. But 
for his thick covering of furs, his skin tough as 
leather and reeking with oil, he would have been 
frozen in the midst of his journey. But the still 
excitement of the hunt was pumping the blood 
hotly through his veins. He was now within 
gunshot, but in that dim light his shooting would 
be uncertain. He preferred to worm his way 
nearer, and then trust to his more accustomed 
weapon, the spear, which he could drive half-way 
through the tough bulk of a walrus. 



8 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

At last there remained between him and the 
seals but one low ridge and then a space of level 
floe. This was the critical point. If he could 
writhe his body over the crest and down the other 
side, he would be within safe spear-shot. He 
would spring to his feet and throw before the 
nimblest seal could gain the water. He lay abso- 
lutely still, summoning wits, nerves, and muscles 
alike to serve his will with their best. His 
eyes burned deep in his head, like smouldering 
coals. 

Just at this moment a ghostly light waved 
broadly across the solitude. It paled, withdrew, 
wavered back and forth as shaken from a curtain 
in the heavens, then steadied ephemerally into an 
arch of glowing silver, which threw the light of a 
dozen moons. There were three seals out upon 
the ice at that moment, and they all lifted their 
eyes simultaneously to greet the illumination. 
The man irresistibly looked up ; but in the same 
instant, remembering the hunger in the igloo, he 
cowered back again out of sight, trembling lest 
some of the seals might have caught a glimpse of 
his head above the ridge. Some dozen rods away, 
at the other side of the air-hole, the great white 
bear also raised his eyes towards that mysterious 
light, troubled at heart because he knew it was 
going to hamper his hunting. 



ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 9 

For perhaps two minutes the seals were 
motionless, profiting by the sudden brightness to 
scrutinize the expanse of ice and snow in every 
direction. Then, quite satisfied that no danger 
was near, they resumed their sportive plungings 
while the instantly frozen waters crackled crisply 
about them. For all their vigilance, they had 
failed to detect, on the one side, a narrow, black- 
tipped muzzle lying flat in a cleft of the ice-ridge, 
or, on the other side, a bunch of grayish fur, 
nearly the color of the grayish-mottled ice, 
which covered the head of the man from the igloo 
beside the Little Hills. 

And now, while neither the man nor the bear, 
each utterly unconscious of the other, dared to stir, 
in a flash the still silver radiance of the aurora broke 
up and flamed into a riot of dancing color. Par- 
allel rays like the pipes of a Titanic organ, reaching 
almost from the horizon to the zenith, hurtled 
madly from side to side, now elongating, now 
shortening abruptly, now seeming to clash against 
one another, but always in an ordered madness of 
right lines. Unearthly green, palpitating into 
rose, and thinnest sapphire, and flame-color, and 
ineffably tender violet, the dance of these cohorts 
of the magnetic rays went on, across the stupen- 
dous arc of sky, till the man, afraid of freezing 
in his unnatural stillness, shrank back down the 



10 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

ridge, and began twisting his body, noiselessly but 
violently, to set his blood in motion ; and the bear, 
trusting to the confusion of shifting lights, slipped 
himself over the ridge and into a convenient 
crevice. Under the full but bewildering glare of 
that celestial illumination, he had gained a good 
ten feet upon his human rival. The man's eyes 
reappeared just then at the crest of his ridge. 
Their piercing glance lingered, as if with suspicion, 
upon the crevice wherein the bear had flattened 
himself. Was there something unduly solid in 
that purple shadow in the crevice ? No, a 
trick of the witch lights, surely. The piercing 
eyes returned to their eager watching of the 
seals. 

Precious as was his ammunition, and indifferent 
as was his shooting with the old, big bore, Hud- 
son Bay musket, the man was beginning to think 
he would have to stake his chances on the gun. 
But, suddenly, as if at a handsweep of the Infinite, 
the great lights vanished. 

For a few seconds, by the violence of the con- 
trast, it seemed as if thick darkness had fallen 
upon the world. 

In those few seconds, noiseless and swift as a 
panther, the man had run over the ridge to within 
a dozen paces of the seals, and paused with spear 
uplifted, waiting till his eyes should once more 



ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD n 

be able to see in the starlight glimmer. As he 
stood thus waiting, every sense, nerve, and 
muscle on the last strain of expectancy and readi- 
ness, he heard, or seemed to feel as much as to 
hear, the rush of some great bulk through the 
gloom. Then came a scramble, a heavy splash, a 
second splash, a terrible scuffling noise, and a 
hoarse, barking scream. The man remembered 
that before the light went out there had been three 
seals on the ice. Two he had heard escape. 
What had befallen the third ? Fiercely, like a 
beast being robbed of its prey, he sprang forward 
a couple of paces. Then he stopped, for he could 
not yet see clearly enough to distinguish what was 
before him. His blood pounded through his 
veins. The cold of Eternity was flowing in upon 
him, here on the naked roof of the world, but he 
had no feeling or fear of it. All he felt was the 
presence of his foe, there before him, close before 
him, in the dark. 

Then, once more, the light flooded back, — 
the wide-flung silver radiance, — as suddenly and 
mysteriously as it had vanished. 

Close beside the air-hole, half crouching upon 
the body of the slain seal, with one great paw up- 
lifted, and bloody jaws open in defiance, stood 
the bear, glaring at the man. 

Without an instant's hesitation the man hurled 



12 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

his spear. It flew true. But in that same second 
the bear lifted his paw to ward off the blow. He 
was not quite quick enough, but almost. The 
blade struck, but not where it was aimed. It bit 
deep, but not to the life. With a growl of rage, 
the bear tore it loose and charged upon the 
man. 

The antagonists were not more than twenty 
paces apart, and now a glory of colored lights, 
green, red, and golden, went dancing madly over 
them, with a whispering, rustling sound as of 
stiff silk crumpled in vast folds. The man's eyes 
were keen and steady. In a flash both hands were 
out of his great fur mittens, which were tied by 
thongs to his sleeves. The heavy musket leaped 
to his shoulder, and his eye ran coolly along the 
barrel. There was a thunderous roar as of a little 
cannon. A dense cloud of smoke sprang into the 
air just before the muzzle of the gun. 

Through the smoke a towering shape, with 
wide jaws and battering paws, hurled itself. The 
man leaped to one side, but not quite far enough. 
One great paw, striking blindly, smote him down; 
and, as he fell, the huge bulk fell half upon him, 
only to roll over the next instant and lie huddled 
and motionless upon the ice. 

The man picked himself up, shook himself; 
and a look of half-dazed triumph went across his 



ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 13 

swarthy face as he pulled on his mittens. Then 
he smiled broadly, patted approvingly the old 
Hudson Bay musket, turned on his heels, and 
sent a long, summoning cry across the ice towards 
the igloos at the foot of the Little Hills. 



BLACK SWAMP 



Black Swamp 

THE brook, which had rattled down so gayly, 
with many a laughing rapid and clattering 
white cascade, from the sunlit granite terraces of 
Lost Mountain, fell silent and hung back as it 
drew near the swamp. Wheeling in slow, deep, 
purple-dark eddies, it loitered for some hundred 
yards or so between dim overhanging ranks of 
alder, then sank reluctantly beneath an arch of 
mossed cedar-roots, and was lost in the heavy 
gloom. 

Within the swamp the huge and ancient trunks 
of cedar and tamarack crowded in a sort of des- 
perate confusion. Of great girth at the base, some 
towered straight up, seeking to get their tops out 
into the sunlight, under those sparse patches of 
far-off, indifferent sky. Others slanted ponder- 
ously, and laid upon their neighbors the respon- 
sibility of supporting their burden of massive 
branches. Yet others, undermined in youth by 
some treachery of the slough, lay prone above 
the water-holes for a portion of their length, and 
then turned skyward, ineffectually, as if too late 

awakened from their sluggish dreams. The roots 
c 17 



18 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

of the trees were half uncovered — immense, coiled, 
uncouth, dull-colored shapes, like monsters strug- 
gling up from the teeming primeval slime. 

In truth, there was a suggestion of something 
monstrous in all that the eye could see in Black 
Swamp. The heavy, indeterminate masses of 
dark mud, or patches of black water, lying deep 
between and under the contortions of the roots ; 
the thick, gray rags of dead cedar-bark ; the rot- 
ting stumps, some uprooted and half engulfed 
in the inert morass ; the overpowering windless 
shadow, which lay thick as if no sound had ever 
jarred it; above all, the gigantic tangle of trunks 
and roots, stagnantly motionless, with the strained 
stillness that is not of peace, but of a nightmare. 
From a branch of one of the sullen trunks hung 
a globe of lightest-gray papery substance, with a 
round hole in the bottom of it. In and out of 
this hole moved two venomous streams of black- 
and-white hornets. 

Suddenly it seemed as if the spirit of the mon- 
strous solitude had taken substance, and was mov- 
ing among the inert shapes of root and trunk. A 
massive fur-clad beast, dull black in color, with 
high, humped haunches and heavy, shapeless limbs, 
its hind feet grotesquely semi-human in outline, its 
head swinging low on a long, clumsy neck, came 
picking its way with a loose-jointed gait over the 



BLACK SWAMP 19 

jumble of roots. With little, twinkling, deep-set 
eyes it peered beneath each root, investigated each 
crevice in the ancient bark, looking for grubs and 
beetles, which its great paws captured with amaz- 
ing though awkward-looking dexterity. For so 
huge a beast as the great black bear, which could 
pull down an ox, to busy himself in the hunting 
of grubs and beetles, seemed one of the whimsi- 
calities of Nature, who pursues her ends indiffer- 
ently through mammoth or microbe. 

Near the tree of the hornets the bear found a 
half-rotten stump. Sniffing at it with instructed 
nose, he decided that it held grubs. Clutching 
at it with his long, hooked claws, he tore away 
one side of it, revealing a mellow-brown, crumbly 
interior channelled by wood-grubs in every 
direction. Those which were in view on the erect 
portion of the stump he first picked out delicately 
and devoured with satisfaction. Then he turned 
his attention to the big slab which he had ripped 
away, and which lay on a hummock of firm 
ground at his feet. 

But the bear was not the only connoisseur of 
grubs in Black Swamp. Some dozen inches be- 
fore his nose a particularly fat maggot was squirm- 
ing in the shallow remnant of its chamber, 
dismayed at its sudden exposure to the air. 
The bear was just on the point of picking it up, 



20 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

when it was pounced upon by one of the great 
black-and-white hornets, as a hawk might pounce 
on a rabbit. Pricked with the tip of the hornet's 
sting, the fat grub lashed itself out in one con- 
vulsive squirm, and then lay still. Straddling 
over it, the hornet rolled it together cleverly, 
then, plunging her mandibles into its soft body, 
proceeded to drain its juices. 

For some moments the bear had watched this 
performance with curious interest, his little eyes 
twinkling wickedly. Now he had had enough 
of the show. Stretching out one mighty paw, 
he laid it down deliberately on the hornet and her 
prey. For a moment he left it there, as if his 
act had been one of considered punishment. 
Then, withdrawing the paw, he eyed the flattened 
insect, and proceeded to swallow her and her 
victim together. 

But the hornet was not quite dead, for the 
rotten wood was soft and full of unevenness ; 
and this insect, with its burnished black body 
barred with creamy white, was no mere peppery 
little cc yellow-jacket " wasp, but the great hornet 
of the woods, whose sting can pierce the hide of 
the moose. No sooner had the bear picked up 
the dangerous morsel than he spat it out again with 
a woof of surprise, and ground it into nothingness 
with an angry sweep of his paw. Then he fell to 



BLACK SWAMP 21 

shaking his head, clawing awkwardly at his mouth, 
and whining a fretful protest at the sting. 
Lumbering down to a swamp-hole close by, he 
plunged his muzzle again and again into the chill 
black mud. After a brief period of this treatment, 
he returned to the stump and went on with his 
banquet of grubs, stopping every now and then 
to shake his head and grumble deep in his throat. 
When another big hornet, catching sight of the 
feast, pounced upon a grub, he smashed her and 
ground her up instantly, without caring how 
many tasty morsels were annihilated in the 
process. s 

When the stump had been quite torn to pieces, 
and every maggot extracted from it, the bear 
moved on to the tree of the hornets. He did 
not notice the nest, for he did not take the 
trouble to look up. If he had done so, being in 
a rage against the venomous tribe, he might, per- 
haps, have had the rashness to climb the tree and 
declare a doubtful war. As it was, he noted only 
that between two great roots, which sprang out 
like buttresses from the base of the trunk, there 
was a space of dry earth, covered with the minute 
elastic needles of the tamarack. Here he threw 
himself down with a grunt, and fell to rubbing 
his face with his thick forepaws. 

But he was restless, the old bear — either be- 



22 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

cause the grubs had not satisfied his hunger, or 
because the sting of the hornet still rankled in 
his jaw. Almost immediately he got up upon 
his haunches, and stared all about, sniffing, with 
his nose in the air. The monstrous confusion 
of roots and trunks, monotonously repeating it- 
self as far as he could see through the shadow, 
appeared to offer him nothing worth his attention. 
But presently he lurched forward, as if he had 
made up his mind what to do. Shambling gro- 
tesquely, but picking his way above the slime as 
delicately as a cat, he kept on for perhaps a hun- 
dred yards. Perhaps his nostrils had caught, 
across the stagnant air, the tang of running water. 
It was running water that he came to, for the 
brook, though often foiled, often diverted, often 
turned back upon itself, and almost lost, had suc- 
ceeded in saving for itself a clean channel through 
the water-holes and chaos of the swamp. 

Just at this point the brook ran through a 
dark but living pool, brown but transparent, with 
here and there a gleam of elusive light, as in the 
eyes of some dark-eyed women. To this pool, 
and others like it strung here and there through the 
swamp, had gathered many fish, — trout, suckers, 
and chub, — fleeing the too direct rays of the high 
midsummer sun. 

Lumbering down the sticky bank, the bear 



BLACK SWAMP 23 

squatted himself on his haunches close to the 
edge of the water, and stared at it fixedly. After 
a time his eyes began to discern the fish which 
thronged in its deep centre. Having assured 
himself that the fish were there, he lay down on 
his stomach, in a hunched, shapeless position, 
with his face close to the water and one paw up- 
lifted. It looked like a difficult position to hold, 
but the bear held it, motionless as one of the 
great roots, and quite as inert-looking, till by and 
by some of the fish, which had been frightened 
away by his coming, swam slowly back to the 
weedy edges to feed. These fish were suckers, 
weed-eaters, thick-bodied and sluggish in move- 
ment, very different from the swift, ravening trout. 
A spark flashed into the deep of the bear's eyes as 
he saw them coming, but not so much as the 
edge of a nostril quivered. A big sucker with 
a snout that overhung, and opened and shut 
greedily, came nosing the mud close up under 
his face. With a lightning scoop the waiting paw 
descended, and the fish, amid a noisy splashing, 
was hurled out upon the bank, half stunned. 
Before it could recover itself enough to flop, the 
bear was upon it. Picking it up between his jaws, 
he carried it lazily back to that dry couch he had 
found beneath the tree of the hornets, there to be 
eaten at his leisure. 



24 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

While the bear, ponderous and sullen, was 
mumbling over his meal in that uncouth solitude, 
there came, moving briskly down the brook's 
margin, a gay little figure that seemed an embodied 
protest against all the dark and enormous form- 
lessness of the swamp. It was as if the world of 
sunlight, and swift motion, and bright vitality, 
and completed form, had sent in its herald to 
challenge the inertness of the gloom. 

The tripping little figure was about the size of 
a fox, and with the long, pointed, inquisitive 
muzzle of a fox. Its abundant fur was of a 
cloudy, irregular yellowish-gray, darkening at the 
tips, and shading to almost black along the back. 
Its tail was long, light, and vividly barred with 
black. Its dainty, fine-clawed, hand-like feet 
were bright black. But the most striking thing 
about it was its face, which was very light gray, 
with a large black patch around each eye like an 
exaggerated pair of spectacles. The eyes them- 
selves were extraordinarily large, dark, and lus- 
trous, and glowed with a startling, almost impish 
intelligence. 

The raccoon was not given, as a rule, to day- 
time prowlings, his preference being for moon- 
light rather than sunlight. Nor, usually, was he 
given to haunting the sinister recesses of Black 
Swamp. But he was a wanderer, and capricious 



BLACK SWAMP 25 

as all vagabonds ; and he had somehow discovered 
that there were crawfish in the brook where it 
flowed through the swamp. He was an ardent 
fisherman, deft and unerring with his hand-like 
claws. But to-day his fishing was unsuccessful, 
for never a crawfish was so considerate as to come 
his way. He saw the suckers and trout gathered 
at the mid-deeps of the pools, but he was too im- 
patient, or not really hungry enough, to wait for 
them to come near shore. While he was watch- 
ing beside the big pool wherein the bear had 
recently fished with such success, a wood-mouse 
unwarily came out of its hole, just at his feet, and 
was captured before it had time to see its peril. 
This prize contented the raccoon. Having killed 
his victim instantly with a cheerful nip behind the 
ears, he sat by the pool's edge and proceeded to 
souse the morsel vigorously up and down in the 
water before eating it. Not until it was washed 
almost to a rag did he seem to think it clean 
enough to eat, and then, after all his trouble, he 
nibbled hardly the half of it, flinging the remnant 
into the water with the air of a wasteful child who 
has never known what it feels like to go hungry. 
From the edge of the brook the raccoon ran up 
the bank. After a pause he turned aimlessly into 
the still turmoil of the trunks and roots. Every 
fallen trunk, every long tentacle of a root that he 



26 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

came to, he would mount it and run along it to 
the end in whatever direction it led. As the luck 
of the wild would have it, this erratic progress 
brought him presently to one of the great but- 
tressing roots of the tree of the hornets. He 
mounted it, of course, followed it nearly to the 
base of the trunk, and stopped abruptly at the 
sight of the bear. 

The bear, who had but recently finished his 
meal of fish, was lying half asleep on the dry 
tamarack needles between the roots. He had 
well eaten, but the sting in his mouth still fretted 
him, and his mood was ugly. His great head 
was moving sullenly, ponderously, from side to 
side. Ominous and dark and ill-shapen, he 
looked strangely like a portion of the swamp 
come alive. The raccoon scrutinized him with 
eyes of bright, mischievous disdain. The bear, 
looking up, caught sight of him, and aimed a 
treacherous blow at him with his tremendous, 
armed forepaw. Light as a feather, the raccoon 
avoided him. It was as if the very wind of the 
blow had swept him from the place of danger. 
The bear grunted at his failure, and fell to lick- 
ing his paw. The raccoon, who had slipped 
around the tree, mounted another root, and gazed 
at his rude assailant impishly. Then, glancing 
upwards, his liquid eyes detected the pendent 



BLACK SWAMP 27 

gray globe of the hornets' nest, pale in the 
gloom. 

The raccoon knew that inside every hornets' 
nest or wasps' nest at this time of the year was a 
mass of peculiarly succulent larvae and immature 
insects. If this gray globe had been a wasps' 
nest, he might, perhaps, have attacked it at once, 
his long hair, thick skin, and skill in protecting 
his eyes, enabling him to brave, without too great 
cost, the stings of the ordinary " yellow-jacket." 
But he noted well the formidable insects which 
hummed about this nest; he knew the powers of 
the black-and-white hornet. Having stared at 
the nest for several minutes, he seemed to come 
to some decision. Thereupon he tripped off 
delicately over the tree-roots to the brook, to 
resume his hunt for crawfish. 

It was by this time getting far along in the 
afternoon. As the gloom deepened at the ap- 
proach of twilight, the bear went to sleep. The 
darkness fell thicker and thicker, till his breath- 
ing bulk could no longer be distinguished from 
the trunk beside it. Then, from narrow open- 
ings in the far-off tree-tops, fell here and there a 
ray of white moonlight, glassy clear, but delusive. 
Under the touch of these scant rays, every 
shrouded mystery of the swamp took on a sort 
of malignant life. 



28 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

About this time the raccoon came back. In 
that phantom illumination, more treacherous than 
the dark, his wide eyes, nearly all pupil, saw as 
clearly as in the daylight. They gleamed elvishly 
as they took note of the sleeping bear. Then 
they glanced upward toward the hornets' nest, 
where it hung just crossed by one chill white pen- 
cil of a moon ray. Softly their owner ran up the 
tree, his delicate claws almost inaudible as they 
clutched the roughness of the bark. 

At the base of the slim branch — hardly more 
than a twig, but alive and tough — which held 
the nest of the hornets, the raccoon stopped. He 
wanted the contents of that nest. But he did 
not want to test the prowess of its guardians, 
which were now, as he well knew, all within, too 
heavy with sleep to fly, but as competent as ever 
to sting. After some moments of deliberation, 
he bit the twig through and let the nest fall. 
Then he scrambled hastily down the tree, as if 
eager to see what would happen. 

His purpose, perhaps, in dropping the nest 
was simply a wanton impulse to destroy what 
he desired but could not have. Perhaps he 
thought the nest would roll into a shallow pool 
at the other side of the tree, and so drown its 
occupants, after which he might rifle it at his 
own convenience. Or, possibly, he calculated that 



BLACK SWAMP 29 

that would happen which presently did. The 
nest fell, not into the water, but between the 
upcurled forepaws, and very close to the nose, of 
the slumbering bear. 

The bear, awakened and startled by its light 
fall, growled and bit angrily at the intruding nest. 
At the same time, with an instinctive clutch, he 
ripped it open, not realizing just what it was. 
The next instant he knew. With a woof of rage, 
he tried to crush it and all its envenomed populace 
within it. But he was too late. The great 
hornets were already swarming over him, crawl- 
ing, burrowing deep into the fur about his face 
and neck and belly. Furiously they plunged 
and replunged their long, flame-like stings. His 
eyes and muzzle crawled with the fiery torment. 
Clawing, striking, snapping, grunting, whimper- 
ing, he rolled over and over in desperate effort to 
rid himself of the all-pervasive attack. But the 
foes he crushed had already left behind their poison 
in his veins. For a few moments his monstrous 
contortions went on, while in a glassy patch of 
white light, on the trunk above, clung the raccoon, 
gazing down upon him with liquid, elvish eyes. 
At length, quite beside himself with the torment, he 
reared upon his hind-quarters, battling in the air. 
Then he lunged forward, and went scrambling 
headlong over the slippery black jumble of roots. 



30 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

The great beast's first impulse, one may guess, 
was simply that of flight, of mad effort to escape 
from foes whom he could not cope with. Hav- 
ing no heed of his direction, the blind guid- 
ance of trunk and root led him around in a 
rough circle, till he came almost back to the tree 
of his fate. Between him and the tree, however, 
lay a spacious patch of morass, fairly firm on the 
surface, but underneath, a slough of viscous mud. 
His eyes almost closed by the stings, the bear 
plunged straight forward into this morass. His 
first instinct was to struggle frantically back, but 
as he fell, his nose had dipped into the mud. 
The chill of it was like a balm to his tortured 
nostrils and lips. This, indeed, was what he 
wanted. He wallowed straight ahead, plunging 
his face deep into the icy slime. The drench of 
it soothed the scorching of his stung belly. The 
anguish of his eyelids was assuaged. Again and 
again, buried now to his shoulders, he thrust his 
face into the ooze. Then, with the salving of 
his torment, his senses seemed to return. He 
tried to wallow back to firm ground. 

The swamp, as we have seen, was in all things 
monstrous. It was monstrous now to its off- 
spring and victim, in warning him too late. The 
patch of morass was of great depth, and the bear 
was sucked under so swiftly that, even as he 



BLACK SWAMP 31 

turned to escape, he sank to the neck. His huge 
forepaws beat and clawed at the stiffer surface, 
breaking it down into the liquid ooze beneath. 
Presently they also were engulfed. Only his 
head remained above the mud. His gaping 
muzzle, strained straight upward, emitted hideous 
gasps and groans. A beam of moonlight lay 
across the scene, still and malignant, and the 
raccoon watched from the tree with an untrium- 
phant curiosity. When at last that terrible and 
despairing head had vanished, and nothing 
remained but a long convulsion of the mud, the 
raccoon came daintily down from his post of obser- 
vation, and examined the remains of the hornets' 
nest. It was crushed and pounded quite too flat 
to be of any further interest to him, so, after a 
disdainful wrinkling of his fine black nose, he 
tripped away to seek again the world to which 
he belonged — the world of free airs, and dancing 
leaves, and clamoring waters, and bright, swift, 
various life, and yellow moonlight over the fields 
of corn. 



THE ISLE OF BIRDS 



The Isle of Birds 

FAR out of the track of ships, in the most 
desolate stretch of the North Atlantic, walled 
round with ceaseless thunder of the surf and wailed 
about continually by innumerable sea-birds, the 
islet thrust up its bleak rocks beneath a pale, 
unfriendly sky. 

It was almost all rock, this little island — gray 
pinnacles of rock, ledges upon ledges of rock, and 
one high, sunrise-facing cliff of rock, seamed with 
transverse crevices and shelves. Only on the 
gentler southward slope was the rock-frame of the 
island a little hidden. Here had gathered a few 
acres of mean, sandy soil, dotted sparsely with 
tufts of harsh grass which struggled into greenness 
at the bidding of a bitter and fog-blighted June. 

But this remote, sterile isle, shunned even by 
the whalers because of the treachery of its envi- 
roning reefs and tides, was by no means lifeless. 
Indeed, it was thronged, packed, clamorous, scream- 
ing with life. It was a very paradise of the nest- 
ing sea-birds. Every meagre foot of it, rock and 
sand, was preempted and occupied by the myriad 

35 



36 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

battalions of puffin, skua, auk, and saddle-back. 
The incessant clamor of their voices, harsh and 
shrill, overrode even the trampling of the surf. 

Within the crowded little domain each tribe 
had its territory. The puffins — or " sea-parrots," 
as some of the sailor folk call them, because of their 
huge hooked beaks — occupied the sandy slope, 
where they had their nests in deep burrows for pro- 
tection against the robber skuas and saddle-backs. 
The auks had a corner of the cliff- face, where along 
every ledge they sat straight up in prim, close array 
like so many dwarf penguins, each couple occupied 
with its precious solitary egg. The rest of the cliff- 
face was monopolized by the screaming hosts of the 
saddle-backs, those great, marauding, black-backed 
gulls, whose yelps and wild ka-ka-ka-kaings made 
most of the deafening tumult in which the rocks 
were wrapt. As for the skuas, or Cf men-o'-war," 
less numerous than the other inhabitants of the 
island, they occupied the lower ledges and the 
rock-crevices around the base of the puffins' field. 
These were the situations which they preferred. 
If they had preferred the territory of the puffins 
or the auks, or even of the big bullying saddle- 
backs which were nearly twice their size, they 
would have taken it. But they neither desired 
nor knew how to dig burrows like the droll little 
puffins ; and they valued their precious eggs too 



THE ISLE OF BIRDS 



37 



highly to want to risk them on the narrow, ex- 
posed shelves of the cliff-face, where there was no 
room to make a proper nest. They took the 
places they wanted, but as these were not the 
places which the other tribes wanted, there was 
no one to feel aggrieved. Saddle-back, auk, and 
puffin — each tribe thought it had the pick of the 
island territory, and felt altogether satisfied with 
itself. 

Now, the weakest of these tribes was the tribe 
of the puffins. But one great strength they had, 
which fully made up for their deficiency in size 
and power. They knew how to burrow deep 
holes for their nests, wherein their eggs and nest- 
lings were safe from the skuas and the saddle-backs. 
Every available inch of soil on the island was 
tunnelled with these burrows, like a rabbit-warren. 
At the bottom of each burrow was either one big, 
solitary egg, or a strange-looking youngster with 
enormous head and beak and an insatiable appetite 
for fish. At this season, late June, most of the 
puffins had hatched out their eggs. At the door- 
way of almost every burrow, therefore, was to be 
seen one of the parents on guard, while the other 
was away fishing to supply the insatiable demands 
of the chick. In dense ranks, sitting erect like auks 
or penguins, the seriously grotesque little birds 
sentinelled their homes, maintaining a business- 



38 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

like quiet in strange contrast to the ear-splitting 
volubility of their neighbors. 

At the extreme left of the territory of the 
puffins, where the rocks broke abruptly, a tiny 
cleft-full of earth made room for just one nest. 
The pair of puffins who had their burrow here 
were comparatively isolated, being some eight or 
ten feet apart from the crowded ranks of their 
kin. Their one big egg had been safely hatched. 
The ridiculous chick, all gaping beak and naked 
belly, the one object of their passionate solicitude, 
was thriving and hungry according to the finest 
traditions of infant puffinhood. The father, at 
this moment, was on guard at the mouth of the 
burrow, sitting solemnly erect on his webbed feet, 
the backs of his legs, and his stiff, short tail ; 
while the mother was away fishing beyond the 
white turmoil of the surf. 

Surely the most curious figure of all the sea- 
birds was his. For the body, it was not so far 
out of the ordinary, — about the size of a big and 
sturdy cockatoo, — white below and blackish-brown 
above, sides of the face white, and a dingy white 
collar on the neck ; the webbed feet of a duck ; 
the stiff, short tail of a penguin ; very short, strong 
wings ; and a round head. But the beak was like 
a gaudy caricature. Curved from base to tip like 
a parrot's, it was as long and high as the head 



THE ISLE OF BIRDS 39 

which it seemed to overweigh, and adorned 
apparently aimlessly with exaggerated horny ridges. 
Over each eye was a little wart-like horn, and at 
each corner of the beak, where it joined the skin 
of the face, a vivid red, wrinkled excrescence, in 
shape a sort of rosette, of skinny flesh. Service- 
able, to be sure, this beak was obviously, whether 
for burrowing, fighting, or catching fish; but it 
could be imagined as performing all these offices 
equally well without its monstrous eccentricities 
of adornment. 

Everywhere in front of the cliff-face, over the 
ledges, above the white shuddering of the surf, 
and far out over the smooth leaden-gray rollers, 
the air was full of whirling and beating wings. 
These were the wings of the giant gulls and the 
skuas. The puffins did no more flying than was 
necessary — swift and straight from their nests 
out to the fishing-grounds, and back with their 
prey to the nests. Above their little domain, 
therefore, the honeycombed south-sloping field, 
there were no soaring or whirling wings, save for 
three or four pirate skuas, on the watch for a 
chance of robbery. 

It was these marauders that the waiting puffin 
by his nest door, on the outskirts of the colony, 
had most dread of. He was a wise old bird, of 
several seasons' experience and many a successful 



40 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

battle ; and he knew that the light-darting skua, 
though not much more than half the size of that 
bully of the cliffs, the saddle-back, was much 
more dangerous than the latter because so much 
more courageous. An impatient croak from the 
hungry nestling in the burrow made him poke 
his big beak inside and utter a low, chuckling ad- 
monition. When he withdrew his head and looked 
up, he fluttered the feathers on his neck and 
opened his beak angrily. A large skua, of a 
rusty, mottled black all over, with long tail and 
long, hawk-like wings, was circling above him, 
staring down at him with savage eyes. 

Just a moment or two before this the hen puf- 
fin, fishing out at sea, had marked a plump her- 
ring about a foot below the surface of a transparent, 
glassy roller. Diving into the water with a violent 
splash, she had pursued the fish in his own element, 
swimming at an altogether miraculous speed. To 
gain this speed she used not only her strong, 
webbed feet, but also her short, sturdy wings. 
Darting through the water in this fashion, just 
below the surface, she was an amazing figure, 
some fantastic link, as it were, between bird and 
fish. The herring was overtaken, and clutched 
securely in the vice of the great parrot beak. 
Then, with much desperate flapping and splash- 
ing, she burst forth and rose into the air, head- 



THE ISLE OF BIRDS 41 

ing homeward, straight as a bullet, with her 
prize. 

Flying close to the surface of the sea, she passed 
through the high-flung spray of the surf. At 
this moment some premonition of her coming 
drew her mate's eyes, and he caught sight of her, 
just mounting above the ledges. Following his 
look, the skua, whirling above his head, caught 
sight of her also, and marked the prey she carried 
in her beak. With one magnificent effortless 
thrust of his long pinions, he swooped to intercept 
her. 

The puffin, her great beak and the prize it 
clutched looking much too big for her swiftly 
beating wings to upbear, was coming up over the 
ledges at a humming pace, when she saw the dark 
robber descending upon her. She swerved, and 
so escaped the full force of the blow ; but she 
felt herself enveloped in a whirlwind of wings and 
beaten down almost to the ground. At the same 
time a long, straight, powerful beak, with the tip 
hooked like a vulture's, snapped loudly at the 
side of her head, grasping at the fish she carried. 
Bewildered and terrified as she was, she was at 
the same time full of fighting obstinacy. Hang- 
ing doggedly to her prize, she recovered her 
wing balance, and rocketed on toward her bur- 
row. 



42 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

Her mate, meanwhile, had seen the attack. 
One grotesque little bob of indecision, then he 
had launched himself down the slope to her suc- 
cor. He was not in time to interfere in the 
first encounter, but as he came slanting down 
like a well-aimed missile, the robber was just 
about to swoop again. The indignant puffin 
volleyed into him from the rear, turning him 
almost end over end. For an instant his wings 
flopped frantically, and he almost came down 
upon the rocks. By the time he had recovered 
himself his assailant had struck the water and was 
swimming comfortably on a great gray swell be- 
yond the surf; while the female, with the herring 
gripped still in her absurd beak, was just diving 
triumphantly into her burrow to feed the ravenous 
and complaining chick. 

The skua was disgusted. Had he been what 
he in some ways so much resembled, namely, a 
goshawk or falcon, with a hawk's deadly talons, 
the encounter would have had a very different re- 
sult. But his handsome black feet were armed with 
nothing more formidable than webs for swimming. 
His only weapons were his hook-tipped beak and 
his long, powerful, buffeting wings. Backed, how- 
ever, by his pluck and his audacity, which were 
worthy of a better occupation, these weapons were 
usually sufficient, and he was not used to being 



THE ISLE OF BIRDS 43 

balked as these two serious little householders 
had balked him. With a vicious yelp, he went 
swooping low along the sentinel ranks of the puffins, 
followed by a snapping of indignant beaks which 
crackled along the lines as he went — a curious, dry 
sound, audible through the deep roar of the surf 
and the high-pitched clamor of bird-cries. Here 
and there a buffet of his wing, as it dipped sud- 
denly, would knock over one of the grotesque but 
dauntless doorkeepers, who would pick himself up, 
ruffle his feathers, and waddle back to his post with 
outraged solemnity. 

But revenge for his recent discomfiture was not 
the only or the chief reason for this raid of the 
pirate skua over the domain of the citizen puffins. 
What he wanted above all was food — whether 
fish, or eggs, or nestlings, it was all the same to 
him. A fairly competent fisherman himself — 
though not, of course, in the same class with the 
puffins, because of their power of swimming under 
water — he nevertheless preferred to make others 
do his fishing for him, and to take toll of their hon- 
est gains by force. A hardy and fearless highway- 
man, there was satisfaction for him in the robbery 
itself. As he flew thus close, and with the air of set 
purpose, above the puffin burrows, a few desultory 
saddle-backs who were circling just above dipped 
lower to see what was going to happen. In case 



44 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

of a scrimmage of any sort, there was always the 
possibility of a chance to snatch something. 

As the skua skimmed along, just ahead of him 
came a puffin, volleying upward from the sea with 
a particularly fine fish in his beak. The lucky 
fisherman shot straight to his hole. But, by the 
finest hairbreadth, the robber got there before him. 
There was a wild mix-up of wings. The puffin was 
knocked clean over on his back, losing the fish, 
which fell just before the next burrow. Like a 
flash the proprietor of that next burrow bobbed 
his head forward and snatched at the unexpected 
windfall. He caught it by the tail, and turned to 
plunge into the burrow with it. But in that same 
instant the long beak of the skua caught it by the 
head. For a second or so the two tugged savagely 
at the prize, with a vast flapping and squawk- 
ing. Then the outraged owner, recovering him- 
self, floundered up, fixed his beak in the exposed 
belly of the fish, and began to pull and jerk 
like an angry terrier. 

Feathers and sand flew into the air as the 
triangular tug-of-war went on. But frantic as 
was the turmoil of scuffling and flapping, the 
near-by ranks of puffins paid no attention to it 
whatever, except to turn their great beaks, all at 
the same angle, and stare solemnly, like so many 
fantastic maskers. The gulls overhead, however, 



THE ISLE OF BIRDS 45 

gathered down with excited cries, seeking a chance 
to take part in the scuffle. 

But before they could get their greedy beaks 
into it, it had come to an end. The fish was 
torn apart. The puffin who had grabbed the tail 
fell backwards with it, ruffled but triumphant, 
into his burrow ; the original owner was left with 
just so much as his beak could hold — fortunately 
no mean mouthful ; while the too-successful ma- 
rauder, bearing by far the largest share of the 
prize, beat vigorously aloft through the screaming 
gulls, who would have tried to rob him had they 
dared. Rising strongly above them, he headed 
for the flat ledge, a little inland, where he and his 
dusky mate had made their nest. 

Meanwhile, on the neighboring cliff-face, had 
just occurred one of those incidents which were 
forever stirring up excitement among the colonies 
of the auks and the saddle-backs. It began in 
the usual way. Each pair of auks, it must be 
remembered, has but one egg, which is laid, with 
no pretence of a nest, on the bare narrow ledge. 
As these eggs lie side by side along the rock, just 
far enough apart for the parents to brood them, 
and as they all look amazingly alike, sometimes 
the owners themselves get mixed up as to the 
identity of their speckled property. In this 
instance, two mothers, on a crowded shelf some 



46 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

forty feet above the sea, claimed the same egg, 
and both insisted on brooding it at the same 
time. With curious, strident grumblings, deep 
in their throats, they struggled over it. Their 
mates, chancing both to return from their fishing 
at this moment, joined vigorously in the discus- 
sion. The egg was promptly rolled off the ledge 
and smashed on the rocks below. But in the ex- 
citement its absence was not noticed. Meanwhile 
the combatants were making things most uncom- 
fortable for their nearest neighbors, so these 
presently were dragged into the fight. The un- 
fortunate eggs began dropping over the ledge. 
Instantly the great saddle-backs, from the noisy 
colony higher up the cliff, swept down to gather 
in the juicy harvest. They loved eggs, whether 
fresh or half brooded. Screaming joyously, they 
thronged the air just below the scene of the quar- 
rel, which still went on with zest. Some of the 
tumbling eggs were stabbed cleverly and sucked 
in mid-air as they fell, while others were devoured 
or sucked up, according to the stage of develop- 
ment of their contents, on the rocks below. So 
long did the foolish auks continue their quarrel, 
so unusual was the rain of eggs, so wild was the 
screaming of the delighted banqueters below the 
ledge, that presently a number of the brooding 
saddle-backs — those who should have stayed by 



THE ISLE OF BIRDS 47 

their charges to guard them, whatever their con- 
sorts might be doing — were seduced from their 
too tame responsibilities. Standing up in their 
dizzy nests, — most of which held either two or 
three muddy-colored eggs, scrawled with mark- 
ings of dull maroon, — they stretched their fierce 
yellow beaks over the brink and peered down with 
predacious eyes. For many of them the tempta- 
tion was not to be resisted. With hoarse cries 
they launched themselves downward, and joined 
deliriously in the scramble. 

About level w 7 ith the crest of the cliff, some 
half dozen of the dusky skuas were sailing 
leisurely. They saw their chance. There was 
nothing in the world more to their taste than 
eggs — and particularly the big, rich eggs of the 
great saddle-back gulls. Down they swooped 
upon the unguarded nests ; and in a moment, 
plunging their long beaks through the shells, 
they were feasting greedily. All around them 
sat the other gulls, by the hundred — faithful ones 
who had resisted temptation and stuck to their 
nests. These screamed angrily, but made no at- 
tempt to interfere. " Let each look out for his 
own " was frankly their policy. Before any of 
the delinquent brooders came back, the skuas had 
cleared out every unguarded nest, and sailed off 
with derisive cries. 



48 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

And so it came about that an unwonted num- 
ber of saddle-backs, freed from domestic ties until 
they should be ready to lay new clutches of eggs, 
but very savage and vindictive for all their release, 
now came flapping inland over the island on the 
lookout for any possible chance to avenge them- 
selves. 

At this moment the great skua who had robbed 
the puffin of its fish came in sight of his nest. 
At his approach the female, who had grown im- 
patient, arose from her handsome, greenish- 
brown, mottled eggs, sprang into the air, and 
sailed off toward the sea. For just about ten 
or a dozen seconds the precious eggs were left 
exposed, while the male swept down to them 
on a long, swift glide. But in those brief seconds 
fate struck. With an exultant yelp a huge 
saddle-back dropped out of the sky, directly 
upon the nest, and plunged his beak into one of 
the eggs. The egg was not far from hatching. 
He dragged forth the naked chick and swal- 
lowed it ravenously. Before he could turn to 
another egg, the skua had fallen upon him, 
hurling him clear of the nest, and tearing at 
him with desperate beak. 

Now, the great gull, fully two feet and a 
half in length from the tip of his punishing 
yellow beak to the tip of his tail, was not far 



THE ISLE OF BIRDS 



49 



from twice the size of his fearless and furious 
assailant. Moreover, having just had his own 
nest destroyed, he was in a fighting mood. Or- 
dinarily, being a thorough bully, he would have 
cowered and fled before the skua's swift rage, 
but now he turned and struck back savagely. 
More nimble than he, the skua evaded the blow, 
and caught him by the neck. And promptly 
the two became entangled into a flapping, tearing 
jumble of beaks and feathers. 

It was close beside the nest that the struggle 
went on ; but meanwhile the two remaining eggs 
were lying uncovered to the eyes of prowlers. 
They did not lie there long. Two more big 
saddle-backs straightway pounced upon them, 
crushing them flat in the scuffle. Engrossed 
though he was, the skua saw them. He was 
only a shameless robber, but his mettle was of a 
temper of the finest, and he knew not fear. 
Tearing himself free from his heavy foe, he 
pounced frantically upon these new assailants of 
his home. Startled, they hesitated whether to 
fight or flee. Then, seeing the odds so far in 
their favor, they turned to fight. The first 
saddle-back joining them, they presently suc- 
ceeded in pulling the skua down. Then against 
their great weight and overpowering wings, his 
courage availed him little. Smothered, beaten, 



5<D NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

trodden upon, he disappeared from sight beneath 
the yelping turmoil. The odds had been too 
great for him. In half a minute the battle was 
over and his dark body, with the throat com- 
pletely torn out, lay unresisting beneath the 
broad, pink, heavy-webbed feet of his conquerors. 
Suddenly, as if at a signal, all three saddle- 
backs lifted their heads and stared about them. 
They marked their victim's mate winging upward 
toward them from the sea, swiftly, as if a pre- 
science of evil had summoned her. They saw 
two other skuas sailing down from the cliff-top, 
as if to demand their business in skua territory. 
They had no stomach to face that demand ; they 
had no heart for a fight on anything approaching 
fair terms. Flapping heavily into the air, they 
flew off in haste to lose themselves in the myriads 
of their screaming fellows. The female skua, 
returning, hovered low ; but she did not alight. 
In silence, her head thrust downwards, she circled 
and circled endlessly on dark wings above the 
scattered ruins of her nest, the bedraggled and 
tattered body of her slain mate. And the stiff 
ranks of the puffins, like fantastic toy birds 
carved in wood and painted, stared down upon 
her solemnly from the slopes near by. 



THE ANTLERS OF THE 
CARIBOU 



The Antlers of the Caribou 

When the frost is on the barrens, 
And the popple-leaves are thinned, 
And the caribou are drifting 
Down the wind, 

SO writes one who knows all about how autumn 
comes to the Tobique barrens, and who 
claims to know as much as most men about the 
caribou. But the caribou do not always drift, by 
any means. They are rather an incalculable folk, 
these caribou, — and even in their name one 
notes their inclination to be contrary ; for the 
herds which frequent the high, watery barrens of 
northern New Brunswick are not, as one might 
suppose, the " caribou of the barren grounds," 
but the larger and warier " woodland caribou." 
The faithful observer of the manners and customs 
of this tribe may spend much time one year in 
learning what he will be constrained to unlearn 
with humility the next. 

The lonely lake, smooth as a mirror between 
its flat, desolate shores, spread pink, amber, and 
gold toward the cloudless pink and orange sky, 
where the sun had just sunk below the wooded 

53 



54 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

horizon. All the way up the lake, on one side, 
the shore was an unbroken stretch of treeless bar- 
ren. On the other side the low, dark, serried 
ranks of the fir forest advanced almost to the 
water's edge, their tops like embattled spear- 
points against the colored sky. From this 
shore a spit of sand jutted straight out into the 
lake. On its extremity, his magnificent bulk and 
lofty head black against the pellucid orange glow, 
stood a giant bull-moose, motionless as if mod- 
elled in bronze. His huge muzzle was thrust 
straight out before him, as if he was about to roar 
a challenge. His wide, palmated antlers were 
laid back over his shoulders. 

Far down the lake a solitary huntsman lay be- 
side a dying camp-fire, and gazed at the splendid 
silhouette. A faint puff of the aromatic wood- 
smoke, breathing across his nostrils at that 
moment, bit the picture into his memory so 
ineffaceably, that never after could he sniff the 
smell of wood-smoke on evening air without the 
desolate splendor of that spacious and shining 
scene leaping into his brain. But he was a 
hunter, and the great bull was his quarry. 
Where he lay he was invisible against the dark 
background of tree and brush. Presently he 
reached for his rifle and for a trumpet-like roll of 
birch bark which lay close by. Noiselessly as a 



THE ANTLERS OF THE CARIBOU 55 

snake he crawled to the shelter of a thicket of 
young firs. Then he arose to his feet and slipped 
into the forest. 

At the same instant the moose, as if some 
warning of his unseen foe had been flashed into 
his consciousness, turned and strode off, without 
a sound, into the woods. 

Soon the tiny camp-fire had died to a few white 
ashes, and the half-dark of a cloudless night had 
fallen — still, and chill, and faintly sweet with 
damp, tonic scents of spruce, bayberry, and 
bracken. There was that in the air which spoke 
of frost before morning. It wanted nearly an 
hour of moonrise. The wide, vague world of the 
night, that seemed so empty, so unstirring, grew 
populous with unseen, furtive life — life hunting 
and hunted ; loving, fearing, trembling ; enjoying 
or avenging. But there was no sound, except 
now and then the inexplicable rustle of a dead 
leaf, or an elvish gurgle of water from somewhere 
in the shadows along shore. 

At last the hunter, threading his way through 
the forest as noiselessly as the craftiest of the 
prowling kindreds, arrived in the heart of a 
covert of young fir-trees, from beneath whose 
sweeping branches he could command a near and 
clear view of the sand-spit. Disappointed he was, 
but not surprised, to find that the great moose- 



56 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

bull had disappeared. Seating himself with his 
back to a small tree, his rifle and the birch-bark 
trumpet, or " moose call," across his knees, he 
settled down to wait — to wait with that ex- 
haustless patience, that alert yet immobile vigil- 
ance, which are, perhaps, hardest to acquire of all 
the essentials of woodcraft. In the stillness the 
wood-mice came out and resumed their play, with 
fairy-thin squeaks and almost inaudible patterings 
and rustlings over the dry carpet of the fir needles. 

At last, above the flat, black horizon beyond 
the lower end of the lake, came the first pale 
glow of moonrise. At sight of it the hunter 
lifted the birch-bark horn to his lips and breathed 
through it a deep, bleating call, grotesque and 
wild, yet carrying an indescribable appeal, as if 
it were the voice of all the longing of the wilder- 
ness. Twice he sounded the uncouth call. Then 
he waited, listening, thrilled with exquisite ex- 
pectancy. 

He knew that, when one called a moose, one 
never knew what might come. It might, of 
course, be the expected bull, his lofty, antlered 
head thrusting out over the dark screen of the 
bushes, while his burning eyes stared about in 
search of the mate to whose longing call he had 
hastened. In that case he might perhaps feel 
vaguely that he had been deceived, and fall back 



THE ANTLERS OF THE CARIBOU 57 

soundlessly into the darkness ; or, taking it into 
his head that another bull had forestalled him, he 
might burst out into the open, shaking his antlers, 
thrashing the bushes, and roaring savage challenge. 
But, on the other hand, it might not be a bull at 
all that would come to the lying summons. It 
might be an ungainly moose-cow, mad with jeal- 
ousy and frantically resolved to trample her rival 
beneath her knife-edged hoofs. Or it might be 
something dangerously different. It might be a 
bear, a powerful old male, who had learned to 
spring upon a cow-moose and break her neck 
with one stroke of his armed paw. In such a 
contingency there was apt to be excitement ; for 
when a bear undertakes to stalk a cow-moose, he 
gives no notice of his intentions. The first warn- 
ing, then, of his approach, would be his final sav- 
age rush upon the utterer of the lying call. For 
such a contingency the hunter held his rifle always 
ready. 

But, on the other hand, there might well be 
nothing at all — no answer, all through the long, 
cold, moon-silvered night, summon the birch horn 
never so craftily. 

And this was what the hunter thought had 
been so far the result of his calling. Had he 
chanced to look over his shoulder, he might have 
known better. He might have seen the shadows 



58 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

take substance, condensing into a gigantic and 
solid bulk just behind the little tree against 
which he leaned his back. He might have seen 
the spread of vast and shadowy antlers, the long, 
sullen head, and drooping muzzle, the little eyes, 
in which, as they detected him in his ambush, a 
sudden flame of rage was quenched by the timely 
wisdom of fear. But the giant shape dissolved 
back into shadow, and the hunter never knew 
that he himself had been stalked and considered. 

After a long silence, the birch-bark horn again 
sent forth its appeal. Loud and long it called ; 
then it murmured a series of caressingly desirous 
notes, impatient and importunate. When it 
stopped, from the thick dark just below the sand- 
spit came a light snapping of twigs and brushing 
of branches, which seemed to be moving toward 
the open point. The hunter was puzzled ; for a 
moose-bull, coming in answer to the call, would 
either come with a defiant rush, and make a much 
louder noise, or he would come secretively and 
make no noise whatever. With pounding pulses 
he leaned forward to see what would emerge upon 
the sand-spit. 

To his surprise, it was no moose, but a small 
gray caribou cow, looking almost white in the 
level rays of the now half-risen moon. She was 
followed by another cow, larger and darker than 



THE ANTLERS OF THE CARIBOU 59 

the first, and then by a fine caribou bull. Softly, 
alluringly, the hunter sounded his call again, but 
not one of the caribou paid any attention to it 
whatever. To the bull of the caribou it mattered 
not what lovelorn cow-moose should voice her 
hoarse appeals to the moon. He and his fol- 
lowers were on their own affairs intent. 

He was a noble specimen of his kind, as to 
stature, with a very light grayish head, neck, and 
shoulders, showing white in contrast to the dull 
brown of the rest of his coat. But his antlers, 
though large, were unevenly developed, so ob- 
viously imperfect that the hunter, who wanted 
heads, not hides or meat, hesitated to shoot. He 
chose rather to bide his time, and hope for a 
more perfect specimen, the law of New Brunswick 
allowing him only one. 

For several minutes the bull stood staring across 
the lake, as though half minded to swim it, and 
his two cows — antlered like himself, though much 
less imposingly — watched him with dutiful atten- 
tion. Whatever his purpose, however, it was 
never declared ; for suddenly there came a new 
and more impetuous crashing among the under- 
growth, and the eyes of the little herd turned to 
see what was approaching. An instant later a 
second bull, about the size of the first, but very 
much darker in coloring, broke furiously through 



60 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

the bushes. He rushed about half-way down the 
sand-spit, then stopped, snorting and blowing 
defiance. 

The new-comer had a magnificent set of antlers, 
but the hunter forgot to shoot. 

The white bull, surprised by the unexpected 
challenge, stood for an instant staring stupidly, 
waving his great ears. Then all at once the hot 
blood of arrogant possession and jealous mastery 
seemed to rush to his head. Thrusting aside 
the two cows, who stood huddled in his path, 
with a furious booing grunt, he lurched forward 
to meet the challenger. 

With lowered heads, noses between their knees, 
and the branching spikes of their antlers presented 
straight to the front, they came together with a 
shock and a snort. The hard horn clashed with 
the dry resonance of seasoned wood. Being of 
about equal size, both withstood the shock. 
Both staggered ; but, recovering themselves in- 
stantly, they stood pushing with all the strength 
of their straining, heaving bodies, their hoofs 
digging deep into the sand. 

Then, on a sudden, as if the same idea had at 
the same instant flashed into both their seething 
brains, they disengaged and jumped backward, 
like wary fencers. 

For several tense seconds they stood eying 



THE ANTLERS OF THE CARIBOU 6 1 

each other, antlers down, while the big-eyed 
cows, with ears slowly waving, looked on placidly, 
and the moon, now full risen, flooded the whole 
scene with lavish radiance. The only concern of 
the cows was that the best bull should win, with 
proved mastery compelling their allegiance. 

Suddenly the new-comer, the dark bull, as if 
to get around his adversary's guard, feinted to 
the right, and then lunged straight forward. But 
the white bull was too experienced to be caught 
by such a well-worn ruse. He met the attack 
fairly. Again the antlers clashed. Again those 
monstrous pantings and savage gruntings arose on 
the stillness, as the matched antagonists heaved 
and pushed, their hind legs straddled awkwardly 
and their hoofs ploughing the sand. 

At length the white bull put one of his hind 
feet in a hole. Giving way for a second, he was 
forced backwards almost to the water's edge. 
With a furious effort, however, he recovered him- 
self, and even, by some special good fortune or 
momentary slackness of his adversary, regained 
his lost ground. Both paused for breath. The 
fight hung exactly in the balance. 

To judge from his antlers, the white bull was 
the older, and therefore, one may suppose, the 
craftier duellist. It occurred to him now, per- 
haps, that against a foe so nearly his equal in 



62 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

strength he must seek some advantage in strategy. 
He made a sudden movement to disengage his 
antlers and jump aside. To the trained eyes of 
the hunter, watching from the thicket, the inten- 
tion was obvious. But it failed curiously. At 
the very instant of the effort to disengage, the 
dark bull had surged forward with violence. Not 
meeting the resistance expected, he was taken by 
surprise and stumbled to his knees. The white 
bull, quick to feel his advantage, instantly changed 
his purpose and surged forward with all his force. 
For a moment the dark bull seemed to crumple up 
as his rival's heaving shoulders towered above him. 

Now, this was the white bull's chance. It was 
for him to roll his enemy over, disengage, rip the 
dark bull's unfortunate flank, and tread him down 
into the sand. But he did nothing of the sort. 
He himself staggered forward with the fall of his 
adversary. Then he drew back again, but slowly. 
With the motion his adversary regained his feet. 
Once more the two stood, armed front to front, 
grunting, straining, sweating, heaving, but neither 
giving ground an inch. 

" Locked ! " said the hunter, under his breath. 

That, indeed, was the fact. The two pairs 
of antlers were interlaced. But the sinister truth 
was not yet realized by the combatants themselves, 
because, when either tried to back free, so as to 



THE ANTLERS OF THE CARIBOU 63 

renew the attack more advantageously, it seemed 
to him quite natural that the other should furi- 
ously follow him up. In the confused struggle 
that now followed, they more than once pivoted 
completely around ; and the two cows, perceiving 
something unusual in the combat, drew off with 
a disapproving air to the extremity of the sand- 
spit. Little by little the white bull appeared to 
be getting a shade the better of the duel ; for at 
length, regaining his first position, he began forc- 
ing his rival steadily, though slowly, back toward 
the woods. Then all at once, during a pause for 
breath, both at the same moment awoke to knowl- 
edge of the plight they had got themselves into. 
Both had sought to back away at the same in- 
stant. In the next they were tugging frantically 
to break apart. 

But struggle as they might their efforts were 
utterly in vain. The tough, strong horn of their 
new antlers was ever so slightly elastic. It had 
yielded, under the impact of their last charge, just 
far enough for a perfect locking. But in the 
opposite direction there was no yielding. They 
were inextricably and inexorably fixed together, 
and in a horrid attitude, in which it was impossible 
to feed, or even to straighten up their bowed necks. 

In »the agonized pulling match which now 
began, the white bull had the best of it. He had 



64 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

slightly the advantage in weight. Little by little 
he dragged his grunting rival out along the sand- 
spit, till the two cows, almost crowded off, bounced 
past with indignant snorts and vanished down the 
shore. A moment more, and he had backed off 
the sand into a couple of feet of water. 

The shock of the plunge seemed to startle the 
white bull into new rage. He laid the blame of 
it upon his foe. As if with all his strength re- 
newed, he recovered himself, and thrust the dark 
bull backward with such tempestuous force that 
the latter had all he could do to keep his footing. 
Presently he felt himself at the edge of the woods, 
his hind feet in a tangle of bushes instead of on 
the sand. Then, exhausted and cowed, his legs 
gave way, and he sank back upon his haunches. 
Frantic with despair, he struggled to butt and 
strike with his fettered prongs, and in this futile 
struggle he fell over on his side. The white bull, 
his paroxysm of new vigor come suddenly to an 
end, was dragged down with him, and the two lay 
with heaving flanks, panting noisily. 

The hunter had laid down his roll of birch 
bark. He was just about to step forth from his 
ambush and mercifully end the matter with his 
knife. But there came a brusque intervention. 
He had not been the only spectator of the 
strange combat. 



THE ANTLERS OF THE CARIBOU 65 

Out from the thickets at the lower edge of the 
point came plunging an enormous black bear. 
With one huge paw uplifted, he fell upon the 
exhausted duellists. One blow smashed the neck 
of the white bull. Turning to the other, who 
glared up at him with rolling, hopeless eyes, he 
fell to biting at him with slow, luxurious cruelty. 

In that instant the hunter's rifle blazed from 
the thicket. The bear, shot through the spine 
with an explosive bullet, dropped in a sprawling 
heap across the bent forelegs of his victim. Step- 
ping forth into the moonlight, the hunter drew 
his knife with precision across the throat of the 
wounded bull. 

Straightening himself up, he stared for a few 
moments at the three great lifeless carcasses on 
the sand. Then he let his glance sweep out 
over the glassy waters and level, desolate shores. 
How strange was the sudden silence, the still 
white peace of the moonlight, after all that mad- 
ness and tumult and rage which had just been so 
abruptly stilled ! A curious revulsion of feeling 
all at once blotted out his triumph, and there 
came over him a sense of repugnance to the bulk 
of so much death. Stepping around it, he sat 
down with his back to it all, on a stranded log, 
and proceeded to fill his pipe. 



THE SENTRY OF THE 
SEDGE-FLATS 



The Sentry of the Sedge-Flats 

PALE, shimmering green, and soaked in sun, 
the miles of sedge-flats lay outspread from 
the edges of the slow bright water to the foot 
of the far, dark-wooded, purple hills. Winding 
through the quiet green levels came a tranquil 
little stream. Where its sleepy current joined 
the great parent river, a narrow tongue of bare 
sand jutted out into the golden-glowing water. 
At the extreme tip of the sand-spit towered, sen- 
try-like, a long-legged gray-blue bird, as motion- 
less as if he had been transplanted thither from 
the panel of a Japanese screen. 

The flat narrow head of the great heron, with 
its long, javelin-like, yellow beak and two slender 
black crest-feathers, was drawn far back by a curi- 
ous undulation of the immensely long neck, till it 
rested between the humped blue wing-shoulders. 
From the lower part of the neck hung a fine 
fringe of vaporous rusty-gray plumes, which lightly 
veiled the chestnut-colored breast. The bird 
might have seemed asleep, like the drowsy ex- 
panses of green sedge, silver-blue water, and opales- 
cent turquoise sky, but for its eyes. Those eyes, 

69 



70 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

round, unwinking, of a hard, glassy gold with 
intense black pupils, were unmistakably and sav- 
agely wide awake. 

Over the tops of the sedges, fluttering and 
zigzagging waywardly, came a big butterfly, its 
gorgeous red-brown wings pencilled with strange 
hieroglyphs in black and purple. It danced out 
a little way over the water ; and then, as if sud- 
denly terrified by the shining peril beneath, came 
wavering back toward shore. A stone's throw 
up the channel of the little stream lay a patch of 
vivid green, the leaves of the arrow-weed, with its 
delicate, pallid blooms dreaming in the still air 
above them. The butterfly saw these blossoms, 
or perhaps smelt them, and fluttered in their 
direction to see if those pure chalices held honey. 
But on his way he noted the moveless figure of 
the heron, conspicuous above the ranks of the 
sedge. Perhaps he took the curious shape for a 
post or a stump. In any case, it seemed to offer 
an alluring place of rest, where he might pause 
for a moment and flaunt his glowing wings in the 
sun before dancing onward to the honey-blossoms. 
He flickered nearer. To him those unwinking 
jewels of eyes had no menace. He hovered an 
instant about two feet above them. In that 
instant, like a flash of light, the long, pale neck 
and straight yellow beak shot out ; and the butter- 



THE SENTRY OF SEDGE-FLATS 71 

fly was caught neatly. Twisting his head shore- 
ward, without shifting his feet, the heron struck 
the glowing velvet wings of the insect sharply on 
the sand. Then, having swallowed the morsel 
leisurely, he drew his head down again between 
his shoulders, and resumed his moveless waiting. 

The next matter of interest to come within the 
vision of those inscrutable eyes was a dragon-fly 
chase. Hurtling low over the sedge-tops, and 
flashing in the sunlight like a lace-pin of rubies, 
came a small rose-colored dragon-fly, fleeing for 
its life before a monster of its species which blazed 
in emerald and amethyst. The chase could have 
but one ending, for the giant had the speed as 
well as the voracious hunger. The glistening 
films of his wings rustled crisply as he overtook 
the shining fugitive and caught its slender body 
in his jaws. The silver wings of the victim vi- 
brated wildly. The chase came to a hovering 
pause just before that immobile shape on the 
point of the sand-spit. Again the long yellow 
beak darted forth. And the radiant flies, captive 
and captor together, disappeared. 

But such flimsy fare as even the biggest of 
butterflies and dragon-flies was not contenting to 
the sharp appetite of the heron. He took one 
stiff-legged stride forward, and stood in about six 
inches of water. Here he settled himself in a 



72 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

somewhat altered position, his back more awk- 
wardly hunched, his head held lower, and his dag- 
ger of a bill pointing downward. His wicked 
golden eyes were not indifferent to the possibilities 
of the air above him, but they were now concern- 
ing themselves more particularly with the water 
which flowed about his feet. 

If any one stands at the brink of a quiet sum- 
mer stream, and keeps still enough, and watches 
intently enough, however deserted the landscape 
may appear, he will see life in many furtive forms 
go by. The great blue heron kept still enough. 
The water at this point went softly over a shoal 
half sand, half mud, and in the faint movement 
of the clear amber-brown current the sunlight 
wove a shimmering network on the bottom. 
Across this darted a shadow. The heron's beak 
shot downward with an almost inaudible splash, 
transfixing the shadow, and emerged with a glit- 
tering green and silver perch, perhaps five inches 
in length. The quivering body of the fish had 
its knife-edged gills wide open, and every spine 
of its formidable, armed fins threateningly erect. 
But the triumphant fisherman strode ashore with 
it and proceeded to hammer it into unconscious- 
ness on the hard sand. Then he swallowed it 
head first, thus effectually disarming every weapon 
of fin and gill-cover. The progress of this sub- 



THE SENTRY OF SEDGE-FLATS 73 

stantial mouthful could be traced clearly down the 
bird's slirti length of gullet, accompanied as it was 
by several seconds of contortions so violent that 
they made the round yellow eyes wink gravely. 
As soon as the morsel was fairly down the bird 
stretched its neck to its full length, with a curious 
hitch of the base as if to assure himself the pro- 
cess was completed. Then he resumed his post 
of watching. He had no more than taken his 
place than a huge black tadpole wriggled by over 
the gold-meshed bottom. It was speared and 
swallowed in an eye-wink. Soft, slippery, and 
spineless, it made but a moment's incident. 

A little after, on the smooth surface of the 
smaller stream, some fifty feet up-channel, a tiny 
ripple appeared. Swiftly it drew near. It was 
pointed, and with a long fine curve of oily ripple 
trailing back from it on either side, like the out- 
line of a comet's tail. As it approached, in the 
apex of the parabola could be seen a minute black 
nose, with two bright, dark little eyes just behind 
it. It was a small water-rat, voyaging adventur- 
ously out from its narrow inland haunts among 
the lilies. 

The great heron eyed its approach. To the 
swimmer, no doubt, the blue-gray, immobile 
shape at the extremity of the sand-spit looked like 
some weather-beaten post, placed there by man 



74 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

for his inexplicable convenience in regard to 
hitching boats. But presently, something strange 
in the shape of the post seemed to strike the little 
voyager's attention. He stopped. Perhaps he 
saw the menacing glitter of that yellow, unwink- 
ing stare. After a moment of wavering irresolu- 
tion, he changed his course, swam straight across 
channel, scrambled out upon the wet mud of the 
farther shore, and vanished among the pale root- 
stalks of the sedge. The heron was savage with 
disappointment ; but no slightest movement be- 
trayed his anger, save that the pinkish film of the 
lower lid blinked up once, as it were with a snap, 
over each implacable eye. His time would come 
— which faith is that which supports all those 
who know how to wait. He peered upstream 
for the coming of another and less wary water-rat. 
Instead of the expected ripple, however, he 
now caught sight of a shadow which flickered 
across the surface of the water and in an instant 
had vanished over the pale sea of the grass-tops. 
He looked up. In the blue above hung poised, 
his journeying flight just at that moment arrested, 
a wide-winged duck-hawk, boldest marauder of 
the air. The heron threw his head far back, till 
his beak pointed straight skyward. At the same 
time he half lifted his strong wings, poising him- 
self to deliver a thrust with all the strength that 



THE SENTRY OF SEDGE-FLATS 75 

was in him. On the instant the hawk dropped 
like a wedge of steel out of the sky, his rigid, 
half-closed pinions hissing with the speed of his 
descent. The heron never flinched. But within 
ten feet of him the hawk, having no mind to im- 
pale himself on that waiting spear-point, opened 
his wings, swerved upward, and went past with a 
harsh hum of wing-feathers. Wheeling again, 
almost instantly, he swooped back to the attack, 
buffeting the air just above the heron's head, but 
taking care not to come within range of the 
deadly beak. The heron refused to be drawn 
from his position of effective defence, and made 
no movement except to keep the point of his 
lance ever toward the foe. And presently the 
hawk, seeing the futility of his assaults, winged 
off sullenly to hunt for some unwary duck or 
gosling. 

As he went the heron stretched himself to his 
full gaunt height and stared after him in triumph. 
Then, turning his head slowly, he scanned the 
whole expanse of windless grass and sunlit water. 
One sight fixed his attention. Far up the wind- 
ings of the lesser stream he marked a man in a 
boat. The man was not rowing, but sitting in 
the stern and propelling the boat noiselessly with 
an Indian paddle. From time to time he halted 
and examined the shore minutely. Once in a 



76 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

while, after such an examination, he would get 
out, kneel down, and be occupied for several min- 
utes among the weeds of the shallows along the 
stream's edge. He was looking at the musquash 
holes in the bank, and setting traps before those 
which showed signs of present occupancy. The 
heron watched the process, unstirring as a dead 
stump, till he thought the man was coming too 
near. Then, spreading a vast, dark pair of wings, 
he rose indignantly and flapped heavily away up 
river, trailing his length of black legs just over 
the sedge-tops. 

Not far above the mouth of the stream the 
man set the last of his musquash traps. Then 
he paddled back leisurely by the way he had 
come, his dingy yellow straw hat appearing to 
sail close over the grass as the boat followed the 
windings of the stream. When the yellow hat 
had at length been swallowed up in the violet 
haze along the base of the uplands, the great blue 
heron reappeared, winging low along the river 
shore. Arriving at the sand-spit he dropped his 
feet to the shallow water, closed his wings, and 
settled abruptly into a rigid pose of watching, 
with his neck outstretched and his head held high 
in the air. 

The most searching scrutiny revealed nothing 
in all the tranquil summer landscape to disturb 



THE SENTRY OF SEDGE-FLATS 77 

him. Nevertheless, he seemed to have lost con- 
ceit of his sentry post on the tip of the sand-spit. 
Instead of settling down to watch for what might 
come to him, he decided to go and look for what 
he wanted. With long, ungainly, precise, but ab- 
solutely noiseless strides, he took his slow way up 
along the shore of the little river, walking on the 
narrow margin of mud between the grass-roots 
and the water. As he went his long neck undu- 
lated sinuously at each stride, his head was held 
low, and his eyes glared under every drooping 
leaf. The river margin, both in the water and 
out of it, was populous with insect life and the 
darting bill took toll of it at every step. But the 
most important game was frogs. There were 
plenty of them, small, greenish ochre fellows, 
who sat on the lily leaves and stared with foolish 
goggle-eyes till that stalking blue doom was al- 
most upon them. Then they would dive head- 
foremost into the water, quick almost as the fleet- 
ing of a shadow. But quicker still was the stroke 
of the yellow beak — and the captive, pounded 
into limpness, would vanish down his captor's in- 
satiable throat. This was better hunting than he 
had had upon the sand-spit, and he followed it 
up with great satisfaction. He even had the tri- 
umph of capturing a small water-rat, which had 
darted out of the grass-roots just as he came by. 



78 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

The little beast was tenacious of life, and had to 
be well hammered on the mud before it would 
consent to lie still enough to be swallowed com- 
fortably. This pleasant task, however, was pres- 
ently accomplished ; and the great bird, as he 
stretched his head upward to give his neck that 
final hitch which drove the big mouthful home, 
took a careless step backward into the shallow 
water. There was a small sinister sound, and 
something closed relentlessly on his leg. He 
had stepped into a steel trap. 

Stung by the sharp pain, astounded by the 
strangeness of the attack, and panic-stricken, as 
all wild creatures are by the sudden forfeit of their 
freedom, the great bird lost all his dignified self- 
possession. First he nearly broke his beak with 
mad jabs at the inexplicable horror that had 
clutched him. Then, with a hoarse squawk of 
terror, he went quite wild. His huge wings flapped 
frantically, beating down the sedges and the blos- 
soms of the arrow-weed, as he struggled to wrench 
himself free. He did succeed in lifting the trap 
above water ; but it was securely anchored, and 
after a minute or two of insane, convulsive effort, 
it dragged him down again. Again and again he 
lifted it; again and yet again it dragged him 
down inexorably. And so the blind battle went 
on, with splashing of water and heavy buffeting 



THE SENTRY OF SEDGE-FLATS 79 

of wings, till at last the bird fell back utterly 
beaten. In the last bout the trap had turned and 
got itself wedged in a slanting position, so that it 
was impossible for the captive to hold himself up- 
right. He lay sprawling on his thighs, one wing 
outspread over the mud and leaves, the other on 
the water. His deadly beak was half open, from 
exhaustion. Only his indomitable eyes, still 
round, gold-and-black, glittering like gems, 
showed no sign of his weakness or his fear. 

For a long time he lay there motionless, half 
numbed by the sense of defeat and by that gnaw- 
ing anguish in his leg. Unheeded, the gleaming 
dragon-flies hurtled and darted, flashed and poised 
quivering, just above his head. Unheeded, the 
yellow butterflies, and the pale blue butterflies, 
alighted near him on the blooms of the arrow- 
weed. A big green bull-frog swam up and 
clambered out upon the mud close before him — 
to catch sight at once of that bright, terrible eye 
and fall back into the water almost paralyzed 
with fright; but still he made no movement. 
His world had fallen about him, and there was 
nothing for him to do but wait and see what 
would happen next — what shape his doom 
would take. 

Meanwhile, down along the margin mud, still 
hidden from view by a bend of the stream, an- 



80 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

other stealthy hunter was approaching. The big 
brown mink, who lived far upstream in a musk- 
rat hole whose occupants he had cornered and 
devoured, was out on one of his foraging expedi- 
tions. Nothing in the shape of flesh, fish, or 
insect came amiss to him ; but having ever the 
blood-lust in his ferocious veins, so that he loved 
to slaughter even when his appetite was well sated, 
he preferred, of course, big game — something 
that could struggle, and suffer, and give him the 
sense of killing. A nesting duck or plover, for 
example, or a family of musquash — that was 
something worth while. On this day he had 
caught nothing but insects and a few dull frogs. 
He was savage for red blood. 

Very short in the legs, but extraordinarily long 
in the body, lithe, snake-like in his swift darting 
movements, every inch of him a bundle of tough 
elastic muscles, with a sharp triangular head and 
incredibly malevolent eyes, the mink was a figure to 
be dreaded by creatures many times his size. As 
he came round the bend of the stream, and saw the 
great blue bird lying at the water's edge with wings 
outstretched, the picture of helplessness, his eyes 
glowed suddenly like live coals blown upon. He 
ran forward without an instant's hesitation, and 
made as if to spring straight at the captive's 
throat. 



THE SENTRY OF SEDGE-FLATS 8l 

This move, however, was but a feint ; for the 
big mink, though his knowledge of herons was 
by no means complete, knew nevertheless that 
the heron's beak was a weapon to beware of. He 
swerved suddenly, sprang lightly to one side, and 
tried to close in from the rear. But he didn't 
know the flexibility of the heron's neck. The 
lightning rapidity of his attack almost carried it 
through ; but not quite. He was met by a 
darting stroke of the great yellow beak, which 
hurled him backward and ploughed a deep red 
furrow across his shoulder. Before he could re- 
cover himself the bird's neck was coiled again like 
a set spring, the javelin beak poised for another 
blow. 

Most of the wild creatures would have been 
discouraged by such a reception, and slunk away 
to look for easier hunting. But not so the mink. 
His fighting blood now well up, for him it was a 
battle to the death. But for all his rage he did 
not lose his cunning. Making as if to run away, 
he doubled upon himself with incredible swiftness 
and flew at his adversary's neck. Quick as he 
was, however, he could not be so quick as that 
miracle of speed, which the eye can scarcely fol- 
low, the heron's thrust. The blow caught him 
this time on the flank, but slantingly, leaving a 
terrible gash, and at the same time a lucky buffet 



82 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

from the elbow of one great wing dashed him into 
the water. With this success the heron strove to 
rise to his feet — a position from which he could 
have fought to greater advantage. But the lay 
of the trap pulled him down again irresistibly. 
As he sank back the mink clambered out upon 
the shore and crouched straight in front of him, 
just a little beyond the reach of his stroke. 

The mink was now a picture of battle fury, 
every muscle quivering, blood pulsing from his 
gashes, his white teeth showing in a soundless 
snarl, his eyes seeming to throb with crimson 
fire. The heron, on the other hand, seemed 
absolutely composed. His head, immobile, alert, 
in perfect readiness, was drawn back between his 
shoulders. His eyes were as wide, and fixed, 
and clear, and glassily staring, as the jewelled 
eyes of an idol. 

For some seconds the mink crouched, as if 
trying to stare his adversary out of countenance. 
Then he launched himself straight at the bird's 
back. The movement had all the impetuosity 
of a genuine attack, but with marvellous control 
it was checked on the instant. It had ' been 
enough, however, to draw the heron's counter- 
stroke, which fell just short of its object. With 
the bird's recovery the mink shot in to close 
quarters. He received a second blow, which laid 



THE SENTRY OF SEDGE-FLATS 83 

open the side of his face, but it was a short 
stroke, with not enough force behind it to repulse 
him. Ignoring it, he closed, fixed his teeth in 
the bird's neck, and flung his lithe length over 
the back, where it would be out of reach of the 
buffeting wings. 

The battle was over ; for the mink's teeth 
were long and strong. They cut deep, straight 
into the life ; and, undisturbed by the windy 
flopping of the great, helpless wings, the victor 
lay drinking the life-blood which he craved. A 
black whirling shadow sailed over the scene, 
but it passed a little behind the mink's tail and 
was not noticed. It paused, seeming to hover 
over a patch of lily leaves. A moment more, 
and it vanished. There was a hiss ; and the 
great duck-hawk, the same one whom the heron 
had driven off earlier in the day, dropped out of 
the zenith. The mink had just time to raise his 
snarling and dripping muzzle in angry surprise 
when the hawk's talons closed upon him. One 
set fastened upon his throat, cutting straight 
through windpipe and jugular ; the other set 
gripped and pierced his tender loins. The next 
moment he was jerked from the body of his 
prey, and carried — head, legs, and tail limply 
hanging — away far over the green wastes of the 
sedge to the great hawk's eyrie, in the heart 



84 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

of the cedar-swamp beyond the purple up- 
lands. 

Some ten minutes later a splendid butterfly, all 
glowing orange and maroon, came and settled on 
the back of the dead heron, and waved its radiant 
wings in the tranquil light. 



A TREE-TOP AERONAUT 



A Tree-Top Aeronaut 

ALTHOUGH in the open clearings it was 
full noon — the noon of early Septem- 
ber, hot and blue and golden — here in the 
lofty aisles of the forest it was all cold twilight. 
Such light as glimmered down through the thick- 
leaved tree-tops was of a mellow shadowy brown 
and a translucent green, changing from the one 
tone to the other mysteriously as the eye shifted 
its backgrounds. One tall trunk, long ago 
shattered and broken off just below the crown 
by a stroke of lightning, stood pointing bleakly 
toward a round opening in the leafy roof, reach- 
ing upward a thin-foliaged, half-dead, gnarled 
and twisted arm. 

In the outer shell and coarse strong bark of 
the stricken tree life lingered tenaciously, but 
its heart was fallen to decay. Near the base 
of the arm a round hole gave entrance, through 
the shell of live wood, to a chamber in the hollow 
heart. The chamber had yet another entrance, 
beneath a knot, higher up on the opposite side 
of the trunk. Through these two holes filtered 
a dim warm light, just strong enough to show a 

87 



88 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

huddle of small, ruddy-brown, furry shapes sleep- 
ing snugly at the bottom of the chamber. 

The forest was as still and soundless as a 
dream, under the spell of the noonday heat. 
But presently the silence was broken by the 
approach of heavy footsteps, now crackling as 
they crunched the dry twigs, now muffled and 
dull as they sank into beds of deep moss. They 
were plainly human footsteps, for no other crea- 
ture but man would move so crudely and heed- 
lessly through the forest quiet. Every one of 
the wild kindred, from the bear down to the 
wood-mouse, would move with a furtive wariness, 
desiring always to see without being seen, either 
intent upon some hunting or solicitous to avoid 
some hunter. 

Down a shadowy corridor of soaring trunks 
came into view two figures — a tall heavy- 
shouldered lumberman, carrying an axe, and a 
slim boy with a light rifle in his hand. It was 
the lumberman, booted and long-striding, who 
made all the noise. The boy, in moccasins, 
stepped lightly as an Indian, his eager blue eyes 
searching every nook and stump and branch as 
he went, hoping at every step to surprise some 
secret of the furtive wood-folk. 

Near the foot of the blasted tree he stopped, 
looking up. 



A TREE-TOP AERONAUT 89 

" I wonder what lives in that hole up there, 
Jabe ? " he said. 

The lumberman peered upward critically. 

"Jiminy, ef that ain't a likely-lookin' squir'l 
tree ! " he answered. 

" Squirrel tree ! " echoed the boy. " As if 
every tree wasn't a squirrel tree, wherever there's 
a squirrel 'round ! " 

" Aye, but there's squir'ls an' squir'ls ! You'll 
see ! " retorted the woodsman ; and, swinging 
his axe, he brought the back of it down upon 
the trunk in three or four sounding strokes. 

Straightway a dark little shape, appearing in 
the hole beneath the branch, launched itself 
into the air. It looked like a leap of des- 
peration, as there was no tree within reach of 
any ordinary quadruped's leap. Yet the daring 
little shape was plainly that of a quadruped, not 
of a bird. It was followed instantly, in lightning 
succession, by six or seven others equally daring ; 
and all went sailing away, in different directions, 
across the mysteriously shadowed air. They 
sailed on long downward slants, with legs spread 
wide apart and connected on each side by furry 
membrane, so that they looked like some kind 
of grotesque, oblong toy umbrellas broken loose 
in a breeze. The boy stared after them with 
an exclamation of wonder and delight, trying to 



90 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

keep his eye on them all at once ; but in a mo- 
ment they had disappeared, gaining the shelter 
of other trees, and effacing themselves from view 
as if by enchantment. 

All but one. As the flying squirrels came 
aeroplaning from their rudely assaulted citadel, 
the woodsman had dropped his axe, snatched 
up a bit of stick about a foot long, and hurled 
it after one of the gliding figures. Your woods- 
man is an unerring shot with the hurled axe, 
the pike-pole, or the billet of wood ; but up 
there, in the deceitful transparency of shadow 
and glimmer, the little aeronaut was sailing with 
an elusive speed. The whirling missile almost 
missed its mark. It just caught the outspread 
furry tail, which was serving as a rudder and 
balancer to that adventurous flight. The tail, 
tough and flexible, gave way and took no injury. 
But the tiny aeroplanist, his balance rudely de- 
stroyed, plunged headlong to the ground. 

" Oh-h-h ! " exclaimed the boy, with long- 
drawn commiseration. But, his curiosity too 
strong for his pity, he raced forward with 
the woodsman to capture and examine their 
prize. 

There was no prize to be found. Both had 
seen the flier come to earth. Both had marked, 
with expert eyes, the exact point of his fall. But 



A TREE-TOP AERONAUT 91 

there was nothing to be seen but a softly disap- 
pearing dent in the cushion of moss. 

" Well, I'll be — jiggered ! " said the woods- 
man, fingering his stubbled chin and scrutinizing 
the nearest tree-trunks with narrowed eyes. 

cc Serves us right ! " said the boy. " I'm glad 
he's got away. I thought you'd killed him, 
Jabe ! " 

cc Reckon I just blowed him over," responded 
the woodsman. " But now ye know where they 
hang out, ye kin ketch one alive in a cage-trap, if 
ye want to git to know somethin' of his manners 
an' customs — eh, what ? When ye've killed one 
of these wild critters, after all, to my mind he 
ain't no more interestin' than a lady's fur boa." 

As the two man creatures disappeared down the 
confusing vistas of the forest, the soft dark eyes 
of the flying-squirrel, disproportionately large and 
prominent, with a vagueness of depth which made 
them seem all pupil, stared after them mildly from 
the refuge of a high crotched branch. Unhurt, 
even unbewildered by his dizzy plunge, he had 
bounced aside with a motion too swift for his 
enemies' eyes to follow, and placed a tree-trunk 
between himself and peril. Darting up the trunk 
like a fleeting brown streak, he had been safely 
hidden before his enemies reached the tree. 

Xn his high retreat, the flying-squirrel did not 



92 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

crouch as a red squirrel would have done, but lay- 
stretched and spread out as if flattened by violence 
upon the bark. His color, of an obscure warm 
brown, faintly smudged with a darker tone, blended 
so perfectly with the hue of the bark that, if the 
eye once looked away, it could with difficulty 
detect him again. A member of a little-known 
branch of the flying-squirrel family, — the flying- 
squirrel of Eastern Canada, — he was nearly a foot 
in length, some two inches longer than the com- 
mon flying-squirrel, from whom he differed also 
very sharply in color, his retiring brown and 
gray being in marked contrast to the buff and 
drab and pure white of his lesser but more famous 
cousin. Buff and white would have been so con- 
spicuous a livery in the brown Canadian forests 
that his ancestors would never have survived to 
produce him had they not managed to change that 
livery in time to baffle their foes. 

The flying-squirrel, unlike the impudent and 
irrepressible red squirrel, had a great capacity for 
patience, as well as for prudence. Moreover, he 
had no great liking for activity as long as the sun 
was up, his enormous eyes adapting him for the 
dim life of the night. For some minutes after the 
sound of footsteps had died away in the distance, 
he lay unstirring on his branch, his ears alert to 
the tiniest forest whisper, his nostrils quivering as 



A TREE-TOP AERONAUT 93 

they interrogated every subtlest forest scent. All 
at once his wide eyes grew even wider, and a sort 
of spasm of apprehension flitted across their liquid 
depths. What was that faint, dry, rustling sound 
— the mere ghost of a whisper — on the bark of 
the trunk behind him ? Nervously he turned his 
head. There was nothing in sight, but the ghostly 
sound continued, so slight, so thin, that even his 
fine ear could hardly be sure of its reality. 

The little watcher remained moveless as a 
knot on the bark. The creeping whisper softly 
mounted the tree. Then at last a flat, brownish- 
black, vicious head came into view around the 
trunk, and arrested itself, swaying softly, just over 
the base of the branch. It was the head of a 
large black snake. 

The snake's eyes, dull yet deadly, met those 
of the squirrel and held them. For a moment 
the black head was rigid. Then it began to 
sway again, with a slow hypnotizing motion. 
The eyes — shallow, opaque, venomous — seemed 
to draw closer together as they concentrated their 
energy upon the mildly glowing orbs of their in- 
tended victim. At last the waving head began to 
draw near, the black body undulating stealthily 
into view behind it. Nearer, nearer it came, the 
flat hard eyes never shifting, till it seemed that 
one lightning lunge would have enabled it to fix 



94 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

its fangs in the fascinated victim's neck. But at 
this moment the little aeronaut whisked half 
round, flirted his broad fluff of a tail straight out 
behind him, and sailed quietly from his perch on 
a long gradual swoop, which brought him back 
to the base of the tree from which he had origi- 
nally started. The hypnotizing experiment of the 
black snake had been, in this instance, an unquali- 
fied failure. Angry and disappointed, the snake 
withdrew to hunt mice or other easier game. The 
flying-squirrel ran cheerfully up the tree, slipped 
back into the hole, and curled himself up com- 
placently to sleep away the rest of the daylight. 
Of his companions, two had already stealthily re- 
turned, and the others crept in soon afterwards 
quite unruffled. 

That night moonrise came to the forest close 
on the vanishing trail of the sunset. A long white 
ray, flooding in through the tree-tops, lit up the 
hole beneath the branch of the blasted trunk. 
Without haste the flying-squirrels came one after 
another to their high doorway and launched them- 
selves upon the still air. One might have thought 
that their first purpose would have been to forage 
for a meal ; but, instead of that, they seemed like 
children just let out of school, bent on nothing so 
much as relieving their pent-up spirits. Probably 
they were not hungry. It was the season of 



A TREE-TOP AERONAUT 95 

abundance, and they had, perhaps, ample store of 
green nuts and tender young pine-cones within 
their hollow tree. In any case, they knew the 
forest was full of good provender for them, the 
forest-floor covered with berries for when they 
should choose to descend and gather them. 
There was no hurry. It was good to amuse 
themselves in their high and dim-lit world. 

Their favorite game seemed to be to criss- 
cross each other, as it were, in their long gliding 
flights, which, beginning near the top of one tree 
would end generally near the foot of another, as 
far away as the impetus of their start and their 
descent would allow. Thence they would dart 
nimbly to the top again, sometimes with a 
restrained chirr of mirth, to repeat the gay ad- 
venture. Sometimes, when their descent was 
steep, they would rise again toward the end of it, 
by altering, probably, the angle of their mem- 
branes or side-planes. As they flashed spectrally 
past each other, touched suddenly by some white 
finger of moonlight, their play was like an aerial 
game of tag. But they never actually cc tagged " 
each other. Most likely they took good care to 
avoid any approach to contact in mid flight, which 
might have meant a fall to the dangerous forest- 
floor, the haunt of prowling foxes, skunks, and 
weasels. 



96 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

But though their chief dread seemed to be of 
the far dark ground and its perils, there were 
perils, too, for the little aeronauts even in their 
leafy heights. In the midst of their leaping, 
gliding, and sailing, there came a hollow cry across 
the tree-tops. It was a melancholy sound but 
full of menace — a whoo-hoo-hoo-oo-oo — repeated 
at long, uncertain, nerve-racking intervals. It 
sounded remote enough from the hollow tree, but 
at its first note the game of the furry aeroplanists 
came to a stop. One would have said that there 
were no such things as flying-squirrels in the 
Quah-Davic woods. 

After some fifteen or twenty minutes of 
sepulchral summons and answer, the calling of 
the owls ceased. In perhaps fifteen minutes 
more, the flying-squirrels seemed to make up 
their minds that the danger had removed to some 
other part of the forest. Then, at first timorously, 
but soon with all their former merriment and zest, 
the tree-top aeronauts resumed their game. 

The game was at its height. Down a long 
aisle of the forest the high moon poured a flood 
of unobstructed light. Athwart this lane of brill- 
iance the flying-squirrels went passing and repass- 
ing. On a sudden, as one of them was sailing gayly 
across, it was as if a fragment of black cloud fell 
upon him noiselessly out of the whiteness, blotting 



A TREE-TOP AERONAUT 97 

him out. Somewhere in the cloud burned two 
terrible round eyes, and beneath it reached forth 
two sets of rending talons. The life of the gay 
little glider was clutched out of him with a 
strangled scream, and the cloudy shape, its eyes 
blazing coldly, drifted away into the shadows 
with its prey. 

The game came to a full stop — for that night 
at the least. As luck would have it, the squirrel 
who had been through the adventures of the 
morning — the encounter with Jabe Smith's 
missile and the interview with that would-be 
mesmerizer, the black snake — had been sailing 
just below his unhappy playmate at the moment 
of the great wood-owl's swoop. He had seen the 
whole tragedy, and it made him distrustful of 
aeroplaning for the moment. He decided to 
emulate his cousin the red squirrel, and trust to 
running and climbing, to the solid trunks and 
branches, rather than to the treacheries of the air. 
After hiding in a crotch till his palpitations had 
somewhat calmed down, he descended the tree in 
a cautious search for food. He had had his fill 
of nuts and cones ; he wanted juicier fare. He 
went on all the way down to earth, his appetite 
set on the ripening partridge-berries. 

Now, as it chanced, the boy had taken to heart 
that suggestion of the lumberman's in regard to the 



98 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

cage-trap. His appetite for knowledge of all the 
wild creatures of the woods was insatiable. He was 
eager to know the flying-squirrels more intimately 
than he could know them from the plates and text 
of his natural history books. His idea was to catch 
one, keep it a while, win its confidence, study it, 
and then give it back its freedom before it had 
time to forget how to take care of itself among 
the perils of freedom. That very afternoon, 
therefore, he had returned to the " squirr'l tree," 
carrying a spacious trap-cage of strong wire — a 
cage of two chambers, in which he had already 
kept with success both red squirrels and ground 
squirrels. The second or inner chamber was the 
regulation revolving wire cylinder, designed to 
give the little captive such strenuous exercise as it 
might crave, and to divert its thoughts from its 
captivity. The door was a wide trap, opening 
upwards and outwards, and shutting with a power- 
ful spring at the least touch upon the trigger 
within. Beyond the trigger the boy had fixed a 
varied bait, cunningly calculated to the vagaries 
of the squirrel appetite. There were sweet nut- 
kernels securely tied down, a fragrant piece of 
apple, a bit of green corn-ear, and a crisp morsel 
of bacon rind. 

The boy had no means of knowing whether 
the flying-squirrel was like his red cousin or not 



A TREE-TOP AERONAUT 99 

in the matter of a taste for meat. But he felt 
sure that some one or another of these scented 
dainties would prove too much for the prudence 
of anything that called itself a squirrel. Near the 
great trunk of the blasted tree he found another 
giant, half fallen, its top still upheld by the 
embrace of its stout-armed neighbors. The 
long gradual incline he rightly judged to be a 
favorite pathway of the flying-squirrels as they 
raced upwards from their excursions to the forest 
floor. So, upon the slope of the trunk, some 
six or seven feet above the earth, he fixed his 
trap securely, and left it to show what it could 
do. 

For a long time, however, it did nothing. It 
was a new strange thing on the familiar path, and 
all the little people of the wild avoided it. Till 
near the first gray of dawn not a flying-squirrel 
had dared approach its neighborhood. 

The forest powers seem to have sometimes a 
mischievous trick of selecting some particular one 
of their children for special trial, of following up 
that one for days with a kind of persecution. So 
it came about that the same adventurous little 
aeronant who had fallen foul of both Jabe Smith 
and the black snake, and had so narrowly escaped 
the pounce of the brown owl, had the misfortune 
to be sighted, as he was feasting on the partridge- 



IOO NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

berries not far from the sloping tree, by a weasel 
which had had bad luck in his night's hunting. 

Sinuous as a snake and swifter, his cruel eyes 
glowing like points of live flame, the long yellow 
form of the weasel darted forward. With a faint 
squeak of terror the squirrel sprang for the slop- 
ing trunk, his own hope being to get high enough 
to launch himself into the air. But the flying- 
squirrel is less nimble on his feet than the red or 
the gray. He was much slower than the weasel. 
He gained the sloping trunk, indeed, but the foe 
was almost at his heels. It looked as if the doom 
of the wild was upon him. By a frantic effort, 
however, he evaded for a second the weasel's rush. 
Desperately he raced up the well-known trail. He 
came to the cage. There was no time to go over 
it or to go around it. He hurled himself straight 
in and brought up with a shock against the wires 
of the partition. At the same instant there was 
a loud click behind him. The door snapped 
down tight. And the weasel, unable to check 
himself, bumped his nose against the wires with a 
violence that brought the blood and stirred his 
hunting lust to a madness of fury. 

Both pursuer and pursued recovered themselves 
in a second. It was well that the boy, an exact, 
methodical soul, had lashed the cage securely to 
the trunk, otherwise the mad assaults of the weasel 



A TREE-TOP AERONAUT ioi 

would have torn it loose and dashed it to the 
ground. He was all over it and around it every 
moment, flinging himself viciously this way and 
that in the effort to catch his quarry against the 
wires. And the quaking squirrel at the same 
time dashed himself frantically from side to side, 
keeping ever as much space as possible between 
himself and those relentless blood-seeking jaws. 
He had not the wit or the coolness to crouch in 
the centre of the cage, where he might securely 
have chattered derision at his foe. He had not 
yet, perhaps, even arrived at the truth that his 
prison was his citadel, his tower of safety. But 
at length, as luck would have it, in one of his 
desperate bounds, he shot himself clean through 
the round opening into the second chamber, and, 
before he knew it, he was racing at a breathless 
pace in the vain effort to climb the wall of the 
spinning cylinder. 

For a moment or two the weasel was non- 
plussed. He stopped short and stared at these 
amazing tactics of his victim, his thin lips wrinkled 
back from his pointed jaw and muzzle in a sort 
of soundless snarl. Then, apparently coming to 
the conclusion that such a farce had gone on long 
enough, he sprang with all his strength upon the 
top of the cylinder, in the direction in which it 
was spinning. It was a great mistake. The 



102 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

cylinder did not stop. It spun on and shot him 
off" indignantly, head-first, into space, and brought 
him with a stupefying thud upon the roots of the 
nearest tree. Very sore and disconcerted, he 
picked himself up, gave one look at the spinning 
mystery, and slunk off behind the tree, in a 
humbleness of spirit such as few of his irrepressible 
tribe have ever known. 

All but paralyzed by exhaustion and by the 
utter extremity of his fear, the flying-squirrel 
stopped racing with his wheel. With all four 
hand-like paws, and even with his teeth, he clung 
to the wires, till presently his weight brought it 
to a standstill. Then he crept through the exit 
and crouched, trembling and panting, on the floor 
of the outer chamber. Here, soon after sun-up, 
the boy, who was an early riser, found him. He 
was puzzled, was the boy, over that smear of 
blood on the cage door ; but, finding no clew to 
the events of the night, he was obliged to lay the 
matter away among the many insoluble enigmas 
wherewith the ancient wood so continually and so 
mockingly provokes the invader of its intimacies. 



THE THEFT 



The Theft 

FROM their cave in the cleft of Red Rock, 
where the half-uprooted pine-trees swung 
out across the ravine, the two panthers came 
padding noiselessly down the steep trail. In 
the abrupt descent their massive shoulders and 
haunches worked conspicuously under the tawny 
and supple hide, in a loose-jointed way that belied 
their enormous strength. Where the trail came 
out upon a patch of grassy level, starred with 
blossoms, beside the tumbling mountain stream, 
they parted company — the female turning off 
across the tangled and rocky slopes, while the 
male went on down to hunt in the heavy timber 
of the valley-bottom. Game was scarce that spring, 
and the hunt kept them both busy. They had 
no misgivings about leaving their two blind 
sprawling cubs to doze on their bed of dry grass 
in the dark inner corner of the cave. They knew 
very well that in all their range, for a radius of 
forty or fifty miles about the humped and massive 
hog-back of Red Rock, there was no beast so 
bold as to trespass on the panther's lair. 

It was, perhaps, a half hour later that a man 

105 



106 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

came in sight, a half-breed squatter, moving 
stealthily up the farther bank of the stream. 
His dark figure appeared and disappeared, slip- 
ping from rock to tree, from tree to wild-vine 
thicket, as he picked his way furtively along the 
steep and obstructed slope. Not a twig cracked 
under his moccasined steps, so carefully did he 
go, though the soft roar of the stream would have 
covered any such light sound from all ears but 
the initiated and discriminating ones of the forest 
kindreds. His small watchful eyes took note of 
the grassy level on the other side of the stream, 
and, with a sure leap to a rock in mid channel, he 
came across. He arrived just a few feet below 
the spot where the female panther had taken her 
departure, digging in her broad pads heavily in 
the take-off of her leap. The grasses, trodden 
down in the heavy footprints, were still slowly 
lifting their heads. At sight of this trail, so 
startlingly fresh, the man crouched instantly back 
into the fringing bush, half lifting his rifle, and 
peering with vigilant eyes into the heart of every 
covert. He expected to see the beast's eyes palely 
glaring at him from some near ambush. 

In a few minutes, however, he satisfied himself 
that the panther had gone on. Emerging from 
the bushes, he knelt down and examined the foot- 
prints minutely. Yes, the trail was older than 



THE THEFT 107 

he had at first imagined, by a good half hour. 
Some of the trodden grass had perfectly recovered 
itself, and a crushed brown beetle was already sur- 
rounded by ants. He arose with a grim smile, 
and traced the trail back across the grass-patch 
till it mingled with the confusion of footprints, 
going and coming, which led up the mountains. 
In this confusion he overlooked the traces of the 
other panther, so he was led to the conclusion 
that only one of the pair had gone out. If this 
was the path to the lair, as he inferred both from 
the number of the tracks and the fitness of the 
country, then he must expect to find one of the 
pair at home. His crafty and deep-set eyes 
flamed at the thought, for he was a great hunter 
and a dead shot with his heavy Winchester. 

For days the half-breed had been searching for 
the trail and the den of the panther pair. His 
object was the cubs, who, as he knew, would be 
still tiny and manageable at this season. A good 
panther skin was well worth the effort of the chase, 
but a man in the settlements, who was collecting 
wild animals for a circus, had offered him one 
hundred and fifty dollars for a pair of healthy 
cubs. The half-breed's idea was to get the cubs 
as young as possible, and bring them up by bottle 
in his cabin till they should be big enough for 
delivery to the collector. 



108 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

Before starting up the steep and difficult trail, 
the man examined his rifle. A panther at home, 
protecting her young, was not a foe with whom 
he could take risks. She commanded the tribute 
of his utmost precaution. 

A careful survey of the slope before him con- 
vinced his practised eye that the den must be 
somewhere in that high cleft, where the broken 
faces of the red sandstone glowed brightly through 
dark patches and veils of clinging firs. He 
marked the great half-fallen pine-tree, with its 
top swung out from the rock face, and its branches 
curling upward. Somewhere not far from that, 
he concluded, would he come upon the object of 
his search. 

Difficult as was the ascending trail, now slip- 
pery with wet moss, now obstructed with thick 
low branches which offered no obstacle to the 
panthers, but were seriously baffling to the man, 
he climbed swiftly and noiselessly. His lithe feet, 
in their flexible moose-hide moccasins, took firm 
hold of the irregularities of the trail, and he glided 
over or under the opposing branches with as little 
rustling as a black snake might have made. Every 
few moments he stiffened himself to the rigidity 
of a stump, and listened like a startled doe as he 
interrogated every rock and tree within reach of 
his eyes. Ready to match his trained senses 



THE THEFT IOQ 

against those of any of the wilderness kin, he felt 
confident of seeing or hearing any creature by 
which he might be seen or heard. Mounting 
thus warily, in some twenty minutes or there- 
abouts he came out upon a narrow shelf of rock 
beneath the downward swing of the old pine-tree. 

Cautiously he peered about him, looking for 
some indication of the cave. This, as he told 
himself, was just the place for it. It could not 
be very far away. Then suddenly he shut him- 
self down upon his heels, as if with a snap, and 
thrust upward the muzzle of his Winchester. 
Lifting his eyes, he had seen the black entrance 
of the cave almost on a level with the top of his 
head. A little chill ran down his spine as he 
realized that for those few seconds his scalp had 
perhaps been at the mercy of the occupant. 

Why had the beast not struck ? 

The man took off his old cap, stuck it on the 
muzzle of his gun, and, raising it cautiously, 
wagged it from side to side. This move elicit- 
ing no demonstration from within the cave, he 
scratched noisily on the rock. Having repeated 
this challenge several times without response, he 
felt sure that both panthers must be away from 
home. 

Nevertheless, he was not going to let himself 
be over-confident. He was too sagacious and 



HO NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

instructed a woodsman to think that the wild 
creatures would always act the same way under 
the same circumstances. It was not impossible 
that the occupant of the cave was just waiting to 
see. Drawing back some six or eight feet, the 
man wriggled slantingly up the slope of rock, 
with the muzzle of his Winchester just ahead of 
him, till his face came level with the entrance. 
Every muscle of his body was strung taut for an 
instantaneous recoil, in case he should see before 
him two palely flaming eyes, afloat, as it were, 
upon the darkness of the interior. 

But no ; at first he could see nothing but the 
darkness itself. Then, as his eyes adapted them- 
selves to the gloom, he made out the inmost re- 
cesses of the cave, and realized that, except for a 
vague little heap in one corner, the cave was 
empty. In that case, there was not a single mo- 
ment to be lost. With one piercing backward 
glance down the trail, he slipped into the cave, 
snatched up the two kittens, regardless of their 
savage spitting and clawing, and thrust them into 
an empty potato-sack which he had brought with 
him for the purpose. Hurriedly twisting a cord 
about the neck of the sack, he wiped his bleeding 
hands upon his sleeve with a grin, slung the sack 
over his left shoulder, and hurried away. Hav- 
ing captured the prize, he was quite willing to 



THE THEFT HI 

avoid, if possible, any immediate reckoning with 
the old panthers. 

Till he reached the grass-patch by the stream 
he took no pains to go silently, but made all pos- 
sible haste, crashing through the branches and 
sending a shower of small stones clattering down 
the ravine. The angry and indomitable kittens 
in the bag on his back kept growling and spitting, 
and trying to dig their sharp claws into him, but 
his buckskin shirt was tough, and he paid no at- 
tention to their protest. At the edge of the tor- 
rent, however, he adopted new tactics. Leaping 
to the rock in mid channel, he crossed, and then, 
with great difficulty, clambered along close by the 
water's edge, well within the splash and the spray. 
When he had made a couple of hundred yards in 
this way, he came to a small tributary brook, up 
which he waded for some eighty or a hundred 
feet. Then, leaving the brook, he crept stealth- 
ily up the bank, through the underbrush, and so 
back to the valley he had just left, at a point some 
little distance farther downstream. Thence he 
ran straight on down the valley at a long easy 
trot, keeping always, as far as possible, under 
cover, and swerving from time to time this way 
or that in order to avoid treading on dry under- 
brush. His progress, however, was quite audible, 
for at this point in the venture he was sacrificing 



112 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

secrecy to speed. He had fifteen or sixteen miles 
to go, his cabin being on the farther slope of the 
great spur called Broken Ridge, and he knew that 
he could not feel absolutely sure as to the out- 
come of the enterprise until he should have the 
little captives secure within his cabin. 

As he threaded his way through the heavy 
timber of the valley bottom, a good six or seven 
miles from the den in Red Rock, he began to 
feel more at ease. Here among the great trunks 
there was less undergrowth to obscure his view, 
less danger of the panthers being able to steal up 
upon him and take him unawares. He slackened 
his pace somewhat, drawing deep breaths into his 
leathern lungs. But he relaxed no precaution, 
running noiselessly now over the soft carpet of 
the forest, and flitting from tree-trunk to tree- 
trunk as if an enemy were at his very heels. At 
last, quitting the valley, he started on a long 
diagonal up the near slope of Broken Ridge 
Spur. 

The face of the country now suddenly changed. 
Years before, a forest-fire had traversed this slope 
of the ridge, cutting a clean swathe straight along 
it. 

The man's ascending trail thus led him across 
a space of open, a space of undergrowth hardly 
knee-deep, dotted with a few tall " rampikes," or 



THE THEFT 113 

fire-stripped tree-trunks, bleached by the rains and 
inexpressibly desolate. Having here no cover, 
the man ran his best, and finally, having crossed 
the open, he dropped down in a dense thicket to 
rest, breathing hard from that last spurt. 

In the secure concealment of the thicket he 
laid aside the complaining burden from his back, 
stood his rifle in a bush, let out his belt a couple 
of holes, and stooped to stretch himself on the 
moss for a quick rest. As he did so, he cast a 
prudent eye along his back trail. Instantly he 
stiffened, snatched up his gun again, sank on one 
knee, and insinuated the muzzle carefully between 
the screening branches. A huge panther had just 
shown himself, rising into view for an instant, and 
at once sinking back into the leafage. 

At this disappearance the man grew uneasy. 
Was the beast still trailing him, belly to earth, 
through the low undergrowth ? Or had it swerved 
aside to try and get ahead of him, to ambuscade 
him by and by from some rock or low-hung branch. 
Or, on the other hand, had it given up the pur- 
suit rather than face the perils of the open ? The 
man was annoyed at the uncertainty. Raising him- 
self to his full height in order to command a better 
view of the trail, but at the same time keeping 
well hidden, he stood hesitating, doubtful whether 
to hurry on as fast as possible or to wait a while in 



114 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

this safe ambush in the hope of getting a shot at 
his pursuer. 

# # # # # 

Back to the cleft in Red Rock, beneath the 
down-swung pine, came the female panther. She 
had been lucky. She had made a quick kill, and 
satisfied her hunger, and now she was hurrying 
back to nurse her cubs. 

Just before the door of the cave she caught the 
scent of the man. The fur arose angrily along her 
neck and backbone, and she entered in anxious 
haste. Instantly she came out again, whining and 
glancing this way and that as if bewildered. Then 
she plunged in again, sniffed at the place where the 
kittens had lain, sniffed at the spots where the 
man's feet had stepped, and darted out once more 
upon the ledge. But her appearance was very 
different now. Her eyes blazed, her long and 
powerful tail lashed furiously, and her fangs were 
bared to the gums in anguished rage. Lifting her 
head high, she gave vent to a long scream of sum- 
mons, piercing and strident. The cry reached her 
mate, and brought him leaping in hot haste from 
his ambush beside a spring pool where he was 
waiting for the appearance of some thirsty deer. 
But it did not reach the ears of the running man, 
who was at that moment threading a dense coppice 
far down the valley. Having sent out her call 



THE THEFT 1 15 

across the wide silence, she waited for no response, 
but darted down the trail. The tracks of the de- 
spoiler were plain to follow, and her nose told her 
that they were a good half hour old. She followed 
them down to the water's edge, out on to the rock 
and across the torrent. Then she lost them. 

When her mate arrived, crouching prudently 
behind a thick fir-bush, to reconnoitre before he 
sprang out into the grass, she was bounding franti- 
cally from one side of the stream to the other, 
her enormously thick tail upstretched stiffly, as a 
sort of rudder, through the course of each pro- 
digious leap. For a moment or two the pair put 
their heads together, and the mother, apparently, 
succeeded in conveying the situation to her mate 
in some singularly laconic speech. Almost at 
once, as it seemed, their plans were completed. 
The two started downstream, one along each bank. 
A couple of minutes more, and the man's trail 
was picked up by the female. A low cry notified 
the male, and he instantly sprang across and joined 
her. 

It seems probable, from the female's future 
actions, that the two bereaved animals had now a 
fairly right idea of what had happened. The ab- 
sence of blood, or sign of disturbance in the den 
or on the trail, conveyed to them the impression 
that their little ones had been carried off alive, 



Il6 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

because, to a wild creature, death is naturally associ- 
ated with blood. It is possible, moreover, that 
there was nothing so very strange to them in the 
fact that the man should wish to carry off their cubs 
alive. What was so precious to themselves might 
very well be precious to others also. Mother 
birds, and mother quadrupeds as well, have been 
known, not infrequently, to steal each other's 
young. If, then, the panthers imagined that their 
kidnapped little ones were still alive, the furious 
quest on which they now set forth had a double 
object — vengeance and rescue. 

They ran one behind the other, the female 
leading, and they went as noiselessly as blown 
feathers, for all their bulk. From time to time, 
being but short-winded runners, and accustomed 
rather to brief and violent than to long-continued 
effort, they would pause for breath, sniffing at 
the trail as it grew rapidly fresher, and seeming to 
take counsel together. Their pursuit at length 
grew more stealthy, as they approached the further 
side of the timbered valley, and realized that their 
enemy could not now be very far ahead. 

The two panthers knew all that it concerned 
them to know about the man, except his object in 
robbing them of their little ones. They had often 
watched him, followed him, studied him, when he 
little guessed their scrutiny. They knew where 



THE THEFT 117 

he lived, in the cabin with one door and one win- 
dow, at the back of the stumpy clearing on the 
side of Broken Ridge. They knew his wife, the 
straight, swarthy, hard-featured woman, who wore 
always some bright scarlet thing around her neck 
and on her head. They knew his black-and-white 
cow, with the bell at her neck, which made sounds 
they did not like. They knew his yoke of raw- 
boned red steers, which ploughed among the 
stumps for him in the spring, and hauled logs for 
him, laboriously, in the winter. They knew the 
disquieting brilliance which would shine from his 
window or his open door in nights when all the for- 
est was in darkness. Above all, they knew of his 
incomprehensible power of killing at a distance, 
viewlessly. On account of this terrible power, they 
had tried to avoid giving him offence. They had 
refrained from hunting his cow or his steers ; they 
had even respected his foolish, cackling chickens, 
being resolved in no way to risk drawing down 
his vengeance upon them. Now, however, it was 
different. 

As the two grim avengers followed the trail, 
like fleeting shadows, a red doe stepped leisurely 
into their path before she caught sight of them. 
For one instant she stood like a stone, petrified 
with terror. In the next, she had vanished over 
the nearest bushes with such a leap as she had 



Il8 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

never before achieved. The female might have 
sprung upon her neck almost without effort. 
But she never even raised a paw against this easy 
quarry ; it was a higher hunting that now engrossed 
her. 

When at length the two running beasts came to 
the edge of the open ground on the slopes of 
Broken Ridge, they hesitated. The female, though 
the more deadly in the persistence of her hate, 
was at the same time the more sagacious. First 
of all, she wanted to recover her cubs. No mere 
vengeance could be so important to her as that. 
She shrank back into deeper cover, and started 
off to one side to skirt the dangerous open. But 
noticing that her mate was not following her, she 
stopped and looked back at him inquiringly. 

The male, more impetuous and more bent upon 
mere revenge, showed himself for a moment be- 
yond the fringe of the woods. In that one mo- 
ment, though it was impossible that he should 
have detected the man in his hiding across the 
open, he nevertheless seemed to receive some 
impression from the man's challenging eyes. He 
felt that his enemy was there, in that dense clump 
of young firs. Instantly he dropped upon his 
belly in the undergrowth, flattening himself to an 
amazingly inconspicuous figure. Then he began 
creeping, slowly and with infinite stealth, out 



THE THEFT 1 19 

across the space of peril, beneath the full, reveal- 
ing glare of the sun. The female gave vent to a 
low whimper, trying to call him back. Failing 
in that, she stood and watched him anxiously. 

She could just see his tawny back moving 
through the light green leafage of the scrub. He 
was crawling more swiftly now. He had covered 
nearly half the distance. All at once there came 
a spurt of flame from the fir thicket, and a sharp 
cracking report. In the next instant she saw her 
mate rise straight into the air on his hind legs, 
clawing savagely. Then he seemed to fall together 
and tumble over backwards. 

She knew very well what had happened. This 
was the power of the man. She knew her mate 
was dead. A further sullen heat was added to 
her hate, but it did not make her reckless. She 
ran away down the slope, skirted the open at a 
safe distance, and closed in once more upon the 
man's trail a good mile farther on. She had got 
ahead of the fugitive, for even now she heard the 
faint thud-thud of his loping feet. She hid her- 
self far up a tree, some thirty feet from the trail, 
and waited. 

As the man came up, she eyed him with a 
mingling of mad hatred and anxious question. 
She saw the bundle on his back writhe violently, 
and she caught a little growling complaint which 



120 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

came from it. That settled her policy. Had 
she thought that the cubs were dead, she might 
have dropped upon the man from her post 
of vantage. But the cubs were alive. For 
their sakes she would take no risks with the 
man. 

When he had passed on, she followed at a safe 
distance. The strange procession crossed the 
ridge. It neared the clearing and the cabin. At 
this point the panther heard, some little way back 
from the trail, the tonk-tonk of a cow-bell. There 
was no need of following the man so very closely 
for the moment. She swerved aside, ran straight, 
like a cat going for milk, through the thickets, 
and, with a burst of intolerable fury, sprang upon 
the cow's neck. There was not even a struggle, 
for the animal's neck was broken before it had 
time to know what was happening. The des- 
perate mother tore her victim, but ate none of it. 
Then she hurried on toward the cabin. At least 
she had tasted some beginnings of vengeance. 

As she reached the edge of the clearing, and 
came in sight of the cabin, the man was just 
entering the door, with the precious bundle in his 
hands. She saw the door close behind him. At 
this she whimpered uneasily, and started around 
to skirt the clearing and come upon the cabin 
from the rear. 



THE THEFT 121 

As she went, she caught sight of the two red 
steers, feeding in the pasture field close by the 
fence. She crept up, eying them, but too saga- 
cious to reveal herself in the open. As luck 
would have it, one of the steers at this moment 
came up close to the fence, to scratch his hide on 
the knots. With a snarl the panther struck at 
him through the rails, and drew a long ragged 
gash down his flank. Snorting with pain and 
terror, the steer turned and raced for home, tail 
in air ; and his comrade, taking the alarm, bellowed 
nervously and followed him. 

A few minutes later the man came out of his 
cabin, followed by his wife. The steers were at 
the barn door — a place they usually avoided at 
this season. One of them was shivering and 
bleeding. The man examined the wound, and 
understood. Turning to the woman, he said, — 

"That there's the mother s work. We must 
hunt her down an' settle her to-morrer, or she'll 
clean out the farm. 5 ' 

Letting the frightened steers into the barn, he 
waited anxiously for the tonk-atonk of the black- 
and-white cow coming home to be milked. When 
she did not come, that, too, he understood only 
too well, and his wide mouth set itself grimly. 
It looked as if those were going to be an expen- 
sive pair of cubs. 



122 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

After dark, late, the mother stole close up to 
the cabin. Everything was shut up tight — barn, 
shed, and house alike. At the door-sill she lis- 
tened long and intently, like a cat at a mouse-hole. 
Her fine ear made out the heavy breathings of 
the man and the woman within. It also at length 
distinguished some faint little growlings and grunt- 
ings, such as the cubs only uttered when they 
were well fed. She prowled around the house all 
night, the pale flame of her savage and anxious 
eyes glowing upon it from every direction. Then, 
at the edge of dawn, she stole away, but not far, 
to a hiding-place whence she could command a 
view of the cabin-door. It was within that door 
that her cubs had vanished. 

The sun was not a half hour high when the 
man set forth, and the woman with him, to hunt 
down the dangerous adversary whom they had 
challenged. The woman, who carried a rifle of 
the same pattern as the man's, was almost as sure 
a shot as he. The continued absence of the cow, 
the wound on the red steer's flank, the defiant 
network of tracks all about the cabin, showed 
clearly enough that the fight was now to the 
death. The man and woman knew there would 
be no security for them as long as the mother 
panther remained alive. Therefore they were in 
haste to settle the matter. They picked out a 



THE THEFT 



123 



distinct trail and followed it. It led them straight 
to the body of the slain cow, which the slayer had 
visited twice in the course of the night, just to 
satisfy her thirst for vengeance. 

But at the moment when the two indignant 
hunters were examining the carcass of the cow, 
the panther was at their cabin-door, listening. 
She had seen the man and woman hurry away. 
Now she could hear quite distinctly the little 
complainings of her young. She pushed against 
the heavy door till it creaked, but there was no 
entrance for her by that way. Close by was the 
window. Standing up on her hind legs, she stared 
in. At last she managed to make out the two 
cubs, lying in a corner in a box of rags and straw. 
The sight scattered all her caution to the winds. 
Scrambling up to the window-sill, she dashed her 
head and shoulders through the glass. That the 
jagged fragments cut her mouth and muzzle se- 
verely, she never heeded at all. Forcing her whole 
body through, her powerful haunches caught the 
window-frame, and carried it with them to the 
floor. Writhing herself free of this encumbrance, 
she darted to the box of rags, snatched up one of 
the cubs by the loose skin of its neck, sprang 
through the window with it, and bore it off into a 
growth of tall rank grass behind the barn. Return- 
ing at once to the cabin, she rescued the other 



124 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

cub in the same way, and brought it triumphantly 
to its brother in the long grass. 

About this time she heard the man and the 
woman coming back. Instead of trying to get 
away, she coiled herself flat in the grass and be- 
gan to suckle the cubs to keep them quiet. Her 
hiding-place was the most secure that she could 
have found within miles of the cabin, the man 
having never any occasion to go behind the barn 
— as she had seen by the absence of tracks — and 
the rank growth furnishing a very complete con- 
cealment. Crafty woodsman though the man 
was held to be, it never entered his mind that so 
shy a beast as the panther would take covert thus 
within the very stronghold of the foe. At sight 
of the shattered window he fell into a rage, and 
when he found the cubs gone, he exhausted in- 
genuity in consigning to every torment the man 
who had tempted him into speculating in panther 
cubs. Storming noisily, he hunted everywhere, 
except behind the barn. For a time his wife sat 
composedly on the wood-pile, and cheered him 
with pointed backwoods sarcasms. At last, how- 
ever, the two went away over the ridge, to recover 
the skin of the other panther before it should 
be spoiled by foxes. During their absence the 
mother got both cubs safely carried off to a hollow 
tree some five miles farther along the ridge. That 



THE THEFT 1 25 

night, while the man and the woman slept, with 
boards nailed over their window, she bore them 
far away from the perilous neighborhood. By 
difficult paths, and across two turbulent streams, 
she removed them into the recesses of the neigh- 
boring county, a barren and difficult region, 
where the wanderings of the man were little 
likely to lead him. 



THE TUNNEL RUNNERS 



The Tunnel Runners 

THE deep copper-red channel of the little 
tidal river wound inland through the wide 
yellowish levels of the salt marsh. Along each 
side of the channel, between the waving fringes 
of the grass and the line of usual high tide, ran a 
margin of pale yellowish-brown sand-flats, baked 
and seamed with sun cracks, scurfed with wavy 
deposits of salt, and spotted with meagre tufts of 
sea-green samphire, goose-tongue, and sea-rose- 
mary. Just at the edge of the grass-fringe an 
old post, weather-beaten and time-eaten, stood 
up a solitary sentinel over the waste, reminder of 
a time when this point of the river had been a 
little haven for fishing-boats — a haven long since 
filled up by the caprice of the inexorable silt. 

Some forty or fifty paces straight back from the 
mouldering post, a low spur of upland, darkly 
wooded with spruce and fir, jutted out into the 
yellow-green sea of grass. Off to the left, some 
hundred yards or so away, ran a line of round- 
topped dike, with a few stiff mullein stalks fring- 
ing its crest. Beyond the dike, and long ago 

reclaimed by it from the sea, lay basking in the 
k 129 



130 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

sun the vast expanses of sweet-grass meadow, 
blue-green with timothy, clover, and vetch, and 
hummed over by innumerable golden-belted 
bumblebees. Through this sweet meadow 
wound the slow curves of a placid and brimming 
fresh-water stream, joining itself at last to the 
parent river through an abat-d'eaux in the dike, 
whose sunken valves protected it completely from 
the fluctuation of the tides. 

The dividing line between the tall, waving, 
yellow salt grass and the naked mud-flat was as 
sharp as if cut by a diker's spade, and it was 
fringed by a close brown tangle of grass-roots, 
which seemed to feel outward over the baked 
mud and then curl back upon themselves in ap- 
prehension. Close to the foot of the mouldering 
post, where this fringe half encircled it, appeared 
suddenly a pointed brownish head, with tiny ears 
and a pair of little, bright, bead-like eyes set very 
close together. The head was thrust cautiously 
forth from the mouth of a narrow tunnel under 
the grass-roots. The sharp, overhung muzzle, 
with nostrils dilating and quivering, interrogated 
the perilous outer air ; the bead eyes searched the 
sky, the grass-fringe, the baking open of the flat. 
There was no danger in sight ; but just in front, 
some five or six feet distant, a gaudy caterpillar 
on some bold venture bent was making his slow 



THE TUNNEL RUNNERS 131 

i 

way across the scurfed mud, from one goose- 
tongue tuft to another. 

The pointed head shot swiftly forth from the 
tunnel, followed by a ruddy-brown body — straight 
out across the bright naked space, and back again, 
like a darting shuttle, into the hole, and the too 
rashly adventuring caterpillar had disappeared. 

A little way back from the edge of the flats a 
mottled brown marsh-hawk was flying hither and 
thither. His wings were shorter and broader 
than those of most members of his swift maraud- 
ing race, and he flew flapping almost like a crow, 
instead of gliding, skimming, and soaring, after 
the manner of his more aristocratic kindred. He 
flew close above the swaying grass-tops, his head 
thrust downward, and his hard, unwinking eyes 
peered fiercely down between the ranked coarse 
stems of the " broad-leaf" grass. He quartered 
the meadow section by section, closely and me- 
thodically as a well-handled setter. Once he 
dropped straight downward into the grass abruptly, 
as if he had been shot ; and when, an instant 
later, he arose again, with a great buffeting of the 
grass-tops, he was clutching some tiny gray object 
in his talons. Had one been near enough to 
see, it would have proved, probably, to be a 
young shrew. Whatever it was, it was too small 
to be worth carrying off to his high perch on the 



132 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

dead pine-tree beyond the ridge of the uplands. 
He flew with it to the open crest of the dike 
close by, where he devoured it in savage gulps. 
Then, having wiped his beak on the hard sod, he 
dropped off" the dike and resumed his assiduous 
quartering of the salt grass. 

About this time the little brown, pointed head 
with the bead eyes reappeared in the mouth of 
the tunnel by the foot of the post. Everything 
seemed safe. The samphire and the goose-tongue 
tufts, palely glimmering in the sun, were full of 
salt-loving, heat-loving insects. Warily the 
ruddy-brown body behind the pointed head 
slipped forth from the tunnel, and darted to the 
nearest tuft, where it began nosing sharply and 
snapping up small game. 

The marsh-mouse was a sturdy figure, about 
six inches in length, with a dull chestnut-brown 
back sprinkled with black hairs shading downwards 
through warm gray to a delicate fawn-colored 
belly. Its shoulders and short forelegs were 
heavily moulded, showing the digger of tunnels, 
and its forepaws moved with the swift precise 
facility of hands. The tiny ears were set flat 
and tight to the head, and the broad-based skull 
over the triangular muzzle gave an impression of 
pugnacious courage, very unlike that of the wood- 
mouse or the house-mouse. This expression was 



THE TUNNEL RUNNERS 133 

more than justified by the fact, for the marsh- 
mouse, confident in his punishing little jaws and 
distrustful of his agility, had a dangerous propen- 
sity to stay and fight when he ought to be running 
away. It was a propensity which, owing to the 
abundance of his enemies, would have led speedily 
to the extermination of his race but for the amaz- 
ing and unremitting fecundity which dwelt in his 
blood. 

For all his courage, however, there were some 
foes which he had no inclination to meet and face 
— even he, one of the biggest and strongest of 
his kind. As he glanced aside from his nosing 
in the samphire tufts, he caught sight of a broad 
black splotch of shadow sweeping up the baked 
surface of the flat at terrific speed. 

He did not look up ; he had no need to. 
Only too well he knew what was casting that 
sinister shadow. Though agility was not sup- 
posed to be his strong point, his movement, as 
he shot across the open from the samphire tuft 
to the mouth of his tunnel, was almost too quick 
to follow. He gained the root-fringed door just 
in time. As his frantic, cringing hind quarters 
disappeared into the hole, the great talons of the 
pouncing hawk plunged into the root-fringe, clos- 
ing and clutching so savagely that the mouth of 
the tunnel was obliterated. Grass-roots, however, 



134 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

were not what those rending talons wanted, and 
the great hawk, rising angrily, flapped off to the 
other side of the dike. 

Within the tunnel the brown mouse ran on 
desperately, as if he felt those fatal talons still 
reaching after him. The tunnel was not quite in 
darkness, for here and there a gleam of light came 
filtering through the roots which formed its roof, 
and here and there a round opening gave access to 
the yellow-green world among the big stiff grass- 
stalks. The floor was smooth from the feet and 
teeth of countless other marsh-mice, water-voles, 
and marsh-shrews. To right and left went branch- 
ing off* innumerable side-tunnels and galleries, an 
apparently inextricable maze. But the brown 
mouse raced straight on, back from the waterside, 
deep into the heart of the marsh, anxious only to 
put himself as far as possible from the scene of his 
horrid adventure. 

Running thus suddenly, he bumped hard into 
a little wayfarer who was journeying in the oppo- 
site direction. The tunnel was so narrow that 
only by the use of a certain circumspection and 
consideration could two travellers pass each other 
comfortably. Now the stranger was a mole-shrew, 
much smaller than the brown mouse, but of a 
temper as unpleasant as that of a mad buffalo. 
That the mouse should come butting into him in 



THE TUNNEL RUNNERS 135 

that rude fashion was an indignity not to be tol- 
erated. Gnashing his long, chisel-like teeth, he 
grappled blindly, and rent the brown mouse's ear 
to ribbons. But this was a mistake on his part, 
a distinct error of judgment. The brown mouse 
was no slim timorous barn-mouse or field-mouse, 
no slow and clumsy mole. He was a fighter and 
with strength to back his pugnacity. He caught 
the angry shrew by the neck, bit him mercilessly, 
shook him limp, trod him under foot, and raced 
on. Not until he reached his snug nest in the 
burrow at the foot of the dike did he quite regain 
his equanimity. 

Just about this time there came a succession of 
heavy southwest gales, which piled up the water 
into the funnel-like head of the bay, dammed back 
the rivers, and brought a series of high tides. 
Tides as high were quite unseasonable, and caught 
the swarming little tunnel runners of the salt 
marsh unprepared. As the first flood came lap- 
ping up over the sun-baked flats, covering the 
samphire tufts, setting all awash the root-fringes 
of the grass, and sliding noiselessly into the tunnels, 
there was a wild scurrying, and a faint elusive 
clamor of squeaks came murmuring thinly up 
through the grass. Myriads of brown-and-orange 
grasshoppers, beetles black and green and blue 
and red, with here and there a sleek grub, here 



136 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

and there a furry caterpillar, began to climb the 
long, stiff grass-stalks. The battalions of the mice 
and voles and shrews, popping up indignantly- 
through the skylight of the tunnels, swept unani- 
mously toward the barrier of the dike. Every 
one of them knew quite well that to the sweet 
meadows beyond the dike the peril of the tide 
could not pursue them. 

The big brown marsh-mouse, as it chanced, 
was asleep at the bottom of his burrow. Steal- 
ing up between the grass-stems, a chill douche 
slipped in upon him. Startled and choking, he 
darted up the steep slope of his gallery, and out 
into the wet turmoil. He was an expert swim- 
mer, but he liked to choose his own time for the 
exercise of his skill. This was not one of the 
times. For one second he sat up upon his sturdy 
little haunches, squeaking angrily and surveying 
the excitement. Then, shaking his fur free of the 
few drops of water which clung to it in tiny 
globules, he joined the scurrying migrant throngs 
which were swarming through the dike. 

Along the dike-top the migrants were running 
the gantlet with death. With the first invasion 
of the tide across the flats, all the marsh-hawks 
of the neighborhood - — some four or five — had 
gathered to the hunt, knowing well just what the 
flood would do for them. Also many crows had 



THE TUNNEL RUNNERS 137 

come. At intervals along the crest of the dike 
stood the hawks, with wings half spread, scream- 
ing excitedly, clutching at their victims and de- 
vouring them with unlordly haste. Two, already 
gorged, were flapping away heavily toward the 
forest-clad inland ridges, carrying limp trophies 
in their talons. As for the crows, there were 
perhaps two score of them, all cawing noisily, fly- 
ing low along the crest of the dike, and alighting 
from time to time to stab savagely with their 
dagger-like beaks. 

The big brown marsh-mouse, wise with experi- 
ence and many escapes, took this all in as he 
mounted the slope of the dike. Marking a hawk 
just above him, he doubled nimbly back, jump- 
ing over half a dozen blindly blundering fugitives. 
Some ten feet farther along he again ascended. 
As he came over the crest, in a mob of shrews 
and smaller mice, he saw a glossy crow just drop- 
ping upon him. The eyes of the crow, impish 
and malevolent, were fixed, not upon him, but 
upon a small shrew close at his side. Imagining 
himself, however, the object of attack, the brown 
mouse fell into a rage. Darting upward, he fixed 
his long teeth in the black marauder's thigh, just 
above the leg joint, and pulled him down into 
the scurrying stream of rodents. With a squeak 
of rage and alarm, the crow struck out savagely. 



138 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

His murderous beak stabbed this way and that in 
the crowd, laying out more than one soft-bodied 
victim, while his strong black wings beat others 
into confusion and panic. But in the throng 
swarming over the dike at that point were many 
more of the marsh-mice and the shrews, all sav- 
age in temper. They leaped upon the crow, ran 
over and bore down the buffeting wings, and tore 
vengefully at the hard iridescent armor of close- 
laid feathers which shielded their foe from any 
fatal wounds. In spite of this disadvantage, they 
were wearing him out by sheer fury and weight 
of numbers, when the other crows came darkly to 
his assistance. In a moment he was liberated, 
and the dike-top strewn with gashed furry bodies. 
Bleeding and bedraggled, his eyes blazing with 
wrath, he sprang into the air and flapped away to 
the uplands to recover his composure in the 
seclusion of some dense pine-top. The brown 
marsh-mouse, the cause of his discomfiture, darted 
out from under his wing as he arose, and slipped 
over the edge of the dike with no worse injury 
than a red gash across the haunches. Having 
scored such a triumph over so redoubtable an 
enemy as the crow, he was not troubled by his 
wound ; but discretion led him to plunge instantly 
into the deep green shelter of the grass. 

Here in the sweet meadow, where the timothy 



THE TUNNEL RUNNERS 139 

and clover stood much closer than did the coarse 
stalks of the " broad-leaf ' in the salt meadow, 
the runways of the mice were not, as a rule, 
underground. They were made by gnawing off 
the stems close to the firm surface of the sod. 
The stems on each side, tending to be pressed 
together, formed a perfect roof to the narrow 
tunnels, which pierced the grass in every direction 
and formed a seemingly insoluble labyrinth. 
The brown mouse, however, knew his way very 
well through the soft green light, flecked with 
specks and streaks of pollen-dusty sunshine. 
The tunnels were swarming with travellers ; but 
beyond nipping them on the haunches now and 
then, to make them get out of his way or move 
faster, he paid no attention to them. At last he 
came to the edge of the stream, and to a burrow 
beneath the roots of a wild-rose thicket which 
fringed the water. 

This burrow the brown mouse had once in- 
habited. He felt it was his. Just now it was 
occupied by an irritable little mole-shrew ; but 
the brown mouse, strong in the sense of owner- 
ship, proceeded to take possession. The outraged 
shrew put up a bitter fight, but in vain. With 
squeaks and blood the eviction was accomplished, 
and the brown mouse established himself com- 
placently in the burrow. 



140 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

After a few days the southwest gales blew 
themselves out, the tides drew back within their 
ordinary summer bounds, and most of the refu- 
gees returned to their old haunts among the 
" broad-leaf." But the brown mouse elected to 
remain in his burrow beside the rose-thicket. 
His taste had turned to the clover and timothy 
stalks, and the meadow was alive with brown 
crickets and toothsome, big, green grasshoppers. 
Moreover, in the heat of late July, he loved to 
swim in the bland waters of the stream, keeping 
close along shore, under the shadow of the long 
grass and the overhanging roses, and avoiding the 
dense patches of weed which might give shelter 
to the darting pickerel. His burrow was roomy 
and gave accommodation to a silken-furred brown 
mate, who set herself without delay to the duty 
of replenishing the diminished population of the 
marsh-mice. 

In spite of foraging hawks, foxes, weasels, and 
minks, in spite of calamities, swift and frequent, 
overtaking this, that, and another of the innu- 
merable kindred of the mice, the summer hours 
passed benignly over the burrow by the rose- 
thicket. Then, one sultry scented morning, there 
came a change. The deep quiet of the meadow 
went to pieces in blatant clamor. Loud-voiced 
men and snorting, trampling, clanking horses 



THE TUNNEL RUNNERS 



141 



came to the edge of the grass, and with them two 
strange scarlet machines which clattered as they 
moved. 

One of these scarlet monsters, dragged by its 
horses, swerved off toward the farther side of the 
meadow. The other started straight down through 
the deep grass along the edge of the stream. 
Into the grass, belly-deep, the big horses plunged, 
breasting it like the sea. Instantly the scarlet 
machine, which was ridden by a man, set up a 
new cry. It was a harsh, strident, terrifying cry, 
as if a million twanging locusts had found one 
voice. Before it, to the amazed horror of all the 
furry, scurrying grass-dwellers, the grass went 
down flat in long ranks. The peril of the floods 
was as nothing to this loud uncomprehended 
peril. Marsh-mice, water-voles, shrews, with here 
and there a foraging musk-rat, here and there a 
murderous and ravaging weasel, all fled frantically 
before it. A few, a very few, fled too late. 
These never knew what happened to them, for 
great darting knives, dancing unseen through the 
grass close to the earth, caught them and slew 
them. 

The high cry of the deadly scarlet thing, how- 
ever, gave warning fair and sufficient. As the big 
brown marsh-mouse heard it approaching, he 
dived straight to the bottom of his burrow and 



142 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

lay there trembling. His companion, on the 
other hand, holding different views as to the 
proper place of safety, darted from the burrow, 
wriggled through the thorny stems of the rose- 
thicket, and plunged into the water, where she 
hid herself close under the opposite bank. The 
noise and the darting knives glided almost over 
the mouth of the burrow, and the thumping heart 
of the brown mouse almost burst itself with ter- 
ror. But they passed. Slowly they marched 
away. And when they had grown comparatively 
faint, far down at the foot of the meadow, beside 
the dike, the brown mouse, recovering himself, 
dared to peep forth. He was astonished to see 
a long breadth of grass lying prostrate, with be- 
wildered bumblebees and grasshoppers striving 
to extricate themselves from the ruins. Having 
a valiant heart and a quick eye for opportunity, 
he sprang out of his hole and began pouncing on 
the confused and helpless insects. This, for a 
few minutes, was a profitable game, and a safe 
one, too, for the strident noise, with the presence 
of the men and horses, had driven hawks and 
crows to a discreet distance. But presently the 
cry of the scarlet thing, which had turned at the 
dike and was moving straight up the middle of 
the meadow, began to grow loud again, and the 
brown mouse whisked back into his burrow. 



THE TUNNEL RUNNERS 143 

All through the time of the haying the meadow- 
folk lived in a turmoil of alarm and change. 
At first, under the heavy prostrate ranks of the 
slain grass, they ran bewildered but secure, for 
their foes could not easily detect them. For an- 
other day they were comparatively safe under the 
long scented lines of the dying " windrows/' full 
of grasshoppers and wilted clover-heads. When 
the windrows were tossed together into innu- 
merable pointed hay-cocks, they crowded beneath 
the ephemeral shelter, to be rudely bared next 
day to the blinding sun as the cocks were pitched 
into the rumbling hay-carts. It was a day of hor- 
rors, this, to the meadow kindreds, for a yellow 
Irish terrier, following the hay-makers, would run 
with wild yelpings under the lifted cocks, and slay 
the little people by the hundred. But as for the 
brown mouse, all this time he and his temporary 
mate dwelt secure, keeping to their burrow and to 
the barren but safe tunnels which they had driven 
amid the roots of the rose-thicket. 

When the hay was gone — part of it carted 
away to upland barns, part built cunningly into 
high conical stacks — the meadow-dwellers found 
that they had fallen on evil times. The naked 
meadow, all bare close stubble, open to the eyes 
of hawk and crow by day, and of the still more 
deadly owl by night, had become their worst foe. 



144 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

Some drew back to the fringes of the uplands. 
Some colonized along the winding edges of the 
stream. Some returned across the dike to the 
salt meadow, where the broad-leaf grass was not 
yet ripe for mowing ; while the remnant huddled 
precariously under the bases of the stacks, an 
easy prey for every foraging weasel. In a little 
while, however, the short thick herbage of the 
aftermath thrust its head above the stubble. 
Then new tunnels were run, and life for the 
scurrying and squeaking meadow-folk once more 
began to offer its normal attractions. It was now 
more perilously insecure, however, for the herds 
of cattle turned to pasture on the aftermath kept 
it eaten down ; and the shrewd crows learned that 
their beaks could pierce the fragile and too-open 
roofs of the tunnels. 

At last the snow came, the deep snow and the 
hard cold, enemy to almost all the other kindred 
of the wild, but friendly to the mouse-folk. The 
snow, some two feet deep all over the meadows, 
over the dikes, and to the eating edges of the 
tides, gave them a perfect shelter, and was exactly 
suited to the driving of their tunnels. Food was 
abundant, because they could subsist very well on 
the nutritious root-stalks of the grass. And none 
of their enemies could get at them except when 
they chose to seek the upper air. In the day- 



THE TUNNEL RUNNERS 145 

time they kept to the glimmering blue light of 
the tunnels, but at night they would slip forth 
and play about the firm surface of the snow. It 
was then that they suffered, for though the hawks 
were gone, and the crows asleep, the icy winter 
night was alive with owls ; and foxes, weasels, and 
minks would come prowling hungrily down from 
the uplands. The owls were the worst peril by 
far — marsh-owls, barn-owls, the darting little 
Acadian owls, swift as the sparrow-hawk; and 
now and then the terror of the winter wilds, the 
giant snowy owl of the North, driven down by 
storm and famine from his bleak Arctic wastes. 
The revels of the mouse-folk over their dim-lit 
playgrounds were varied with incessant tragedy. 
But the memories of the little people, fortunately, 
were short. Their perilous diversions went on 
unchecked, while their furry battalions thinned 
amazingly. 

But through all these dangers the brown marsh- 
mouse went his way secure. He kept every exit 
of his tunnels perfectly hidden among the thorny 
tips of the wild rose-bushes, which stood up some 
five or six inches above the top of the snow. The 
successive families which were born and grew up 
in his safe burrow passed out into the maze, to 
be merged in the precarious and passing legions. 
His first mate disappeared mysteriously, and as 



I 4 6 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

he had no facilities for pressing an inquiry among 
the hawks or weasels, he never knew the details 
of her disappearance. Her place was speedily 
filled in the burrow. But to the brown mouse 
himself nothing happened. He confined his 
nightly revels beneath the moon to the region 
of the rose-thickets, and so eluded effectually the 
eyes and claws of the owls. 

It was along toward the end of winter, however, 
when the brown mouse met with his most dan- 
gerous adventure. Shunning, as he did so craf- 
tily, the games on the open snow, he was wont to 
amuse himself — and incidentally seek variations 
in his diet — beneath the ice of his threshold 
stream. An expert swimmer and diver, almost 
as swift as his cousin the musk-rat or his heredi- 
tary enemy the mink, he would swim long dis- 
tances under the water, finding fresh bits of 
lily-root, tiny clams, water-snails, half-torpid 
beetles, and many kinds of larvae. As the 
stream had been high at the time of freezing, 
and had afterwards shrunken in its channel, let- 
ting the ice down with it, there were many air- 
chambers along the brink, between ice-roof and 
water surface ; and slanting downward to the 
nearest of these he had dug himself a tunnel 
from the roots of his thicket. Even here, to be 
sure, there were perils for him. There was one 



THE TUNNEL RUNNERS 147 

big mink which loved to hunt along these secret 
and dim-lit air-chambers, taking long swims be- 
neath the ice. But he was an autocrat, and kept 
all rival minks away from his range ; so the wise 
brown mouse knew that as long as he kept a 
sharp enough lookout against that foe, he was 
secure in the air-chambers. Then, in the stream 
itself, there was always the peril of the great pike, 
which had its lair at the bottom of the deep pool 
down by the abat-d ' eaux. The brown mouse had 
seen him but once — a long, straight, gray-green, 
shadowy shape in the distance — but that one 
sight gave him counsels of caution. He never 
forgot, when in the water, to keep watch for that 
great darting shadow. 

One day, when the brown mouse had swum 
far downstream, and was hurrying back home, 
he was alarmed by loud sounds on the surface of 
the ice, a little below his back door. Some one 
with an axe was chopping a hole in the ice. The 
brown mouse swam away downstream again as 
fast as he could, and the jarring noise of the axe- 
strokes, carried by the ice and by the water, seemed 
to follow him with terrifying concussions. Hid- 
ing himself in a remote air-chamber, he waited for 
the noises to cease. Then, with mingled trepida- 
tion and caution, he swam upstream again. 

As he neared home, he saw a round beam of 



I48 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

light pouring downward to the stream's bed 
through a hole in the ice. In the midst of this 
light there hung, moving softly to the slow current, 
a big lump of fat pork. The brown mouse did 
not know it was pork, but he knew at once it was 
something very good to eat. Very cautiously he 
swam up to investigate it. There seemed to be 
no reason why he should not nibble it. In fact, 
he was just going to nibble it, when, just a few 
feet farther upstream, those terrifying sounds 
began again. The brown mouse took them as a 
warning, and fled back downstream in a panic. 

In a few minutes the noise stopped, and the 
courage of the brown mouse returned. As he 
swam once more homeward, firmly resolved that 
he would taste that delectable mystery on his way, 
a chill in his spine made him remember the great 
pike, and look back. 

There was the great pike, a long dreadful 
shadow, gliding up behind him. 

The brown mouse, as we have said, was a 
wonderful swimmer. He swam now as he had 
never swum before — a brown streak cleaving the 
dim-lit current; and as he went tiny water-bubbles, 
formed by the air pressed out from under his fur, 
flew up till they broke against the ice. But, with 
all his speed, the great pike swam faster, and was 
slowly overtaking him. Just as he passed that 



THE TUNNEL RUNNERS 



149 



strange dangling lump of pork, he realized that 
this was a race which he could not win. The 
entrance to his burrow was still too distant. But 
he remembered a tiny air-chamber under the bank 
close by. It had no exit. It was so small that 
he might not find room there to haul himself 
clear out of the water, beyond reach of his enemy's 
jaws, but he had no choice, and in frantic suffocat- 
ing desperation he dashed for it. 

Even as he turned, however, the sense of doom 
descended upon him. Was he not already too 
late ? The long awful shape of the great fish 
was close upon him. With a convulsive effort 
that almost burst his heart, he gained the air- 
chamber, scrambled half-way out of the water, and 
then, in that cramped space, turned at bay, game 
to the last gasp. 

To his amazement, the great pike was not at 
his tail. Instead, he was still some three or four 
feet away, out there just in the descending beam 
of light from the hole in the ice. The mysterious 
lump of pork had disappeared, but the gasping 
brown mouse did not notice that. His attention 
was engrossed in the amazing and terrifying per- 
formances of the pike. The long gray-green 
body was darting this way and that, in and out of 
the beam of light, but never any great space out 
of it. The great jaws shook savagely from side 



ISO NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

to side, and then the mouse saw that from between 
them a slender gleaming cord extended upward 
through the hole. A moment more, and the pike 
sprang straight up, with a heavy swirl of the water, 
and vanished above the ice. 

It was incomprehensible ; and there was some- 
thing altogether appalling about it. The brown 
mouse shivered. For several minutes he crouched 
there quite still, more utterly panic-stricken than 
he had ever been before in all his precarious little 
life. At last, with hesitation, he worked his way up 
along the bank, beneath the ice, to his own tunnel, 
and scurried in all haste to hide himself in the 
deepest corner of his burrow. And never there- 
after could he comprehend why nothing more was 
seen, or heard, or rumored of the great pike. 



A TORPEDO IN FEATHERS 



A Torpedo in Feathers 

THE blue kingfisher, flying over the still 
surface of the lake, and peering down- 
ward curiously as he flew, saw into its depths as 
if they had been clear glass. What he hoped to 
see was some small fish — chub, or shiner, or 
yellow perch, or trout, basking incautiously near 
the surface. What he saw was a sinister dark 
shape, elongated but massive, darting in a straight 
line through the transparent amber, some three or 
four feet below the surface. Knowing well enough 
what that meant — no fish so foolish as to linger 
in such dread neighborhood — the kingfisher flew 
on indignantly, with a loud clattering laugh like a 
rattle. He would do his fishing, according to his 
usual custom, in the shallower waters along shore, 
where the great black loon was less at home. 

Darting straight ahead for an amazing distance, 
like a well-aimed torpedo, the loon came to a point 
where the lake-bottom slanted upward swiftly 
toward a bushy islet, over a floor of yellow sand 
that glowed in the sun. Here he just failed to 
transfix, with his powerful dagger of a bill, a big 
lake trout that hung, lazily waving its scarlet fins, 

i53 



154 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

beside a rock. The trout's golden-rimmed eyes 
detected the peril in time — just in time — and 
with a desperate screw-like thrust of his powerful 
tail, he shot aside and plunged into the shadowy 
deeps. The heavy swirl of his going disturbed 
an eight-inch chub, which chanced at the moment 
to be groping for larvae in a muddy pocket beneath 
the rock. Incautiously it sailed forth to see what 
was happening. Before it had time to see any- 
thing, fate struck it. Caught in the vice of two 
iron mandibles, it was carried quivering to the 
surface. 

All power of escape crushed out of it by that 
saw-toothed grip, the victim might safely have 
been dropped and devoured at leisure. But the 
great loon was too hungry for leisure. Moreover, 
he was an expert and he took no risks. With a 
jerk he threw the fish into the air, caught it as it 
fell head first, and gulped it down. For a mo- 
ment or two he floated motionless, his small, fierce 
and peculiarly piercing eyes warily scrutinizing 
the lake in all directions. Then, lifting his black 
head, which gleamed in the sun with green, purple, 
and sapphire iridescence, he gave vent to a strange 
wild cry like a peal of bitter laughter. The cry 
echoed hollowly from the desolate shores of the 
lake. A moment or two later it was answered, 
in the same hollow and disconcerting tones, and 



A TORPEDO IN FEATHERS 155 

from behind the islet his mate came swimming to 
meet him. 

For a few minutes the two great birds swam 
slowly around each other, uttering several times 
their weird cry. As they floated at their ease, un- 
alarmed, they sat high in the water, showing some- 
thing of the clean pearly whiteness of their breasts 
and under parts. Their sturdy, trimly modelled 
bodies were about three feet in length, from the 
tips of their straight and formidable green beaks 
to the ends of their short stiff tails. Their heads, 
as we have seen, were of an intense and iridescent 
black, their necks encircled by collars of black and 
white, their backs, shoulders, and wings dull black, 
with white spots and bars. Their feet, very large, 
broadly webbed, and set extraordinarily far back, 
almost like those of a penguin, glimmered black 
as they fanned back and forth in the clear amber 
water. 

Suddenly some movement among the bushes 
along the near shore, perhaps two hundred yards 
away, caught their watchful eyes. In an instant, 
by some mysterious process, they had sunk their 
bodies completely below the surface, leaving only 
their snaky heads and necks exposed to view. 
This peculiar submerged position they held, it 
seemed, without difficulty. But whatever it was 
that alarmed them, it was not repeated ; and after 



156 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

perhaps five minutes of cautious watchfulness, 
they slowly emerged and floated on the surface. 
Presently the female swam back again behind the 
islet, laboriously scrambled out upon the shore, 
waddled to her nest, and settled herself once more 
to the task of brooding her two big gray-green, 
brown-blotched eggs. It was the first week in 
June, and the eggs were near hatching. 

The pair of loons were restless and annoyed. 
Their lake, set in a lonely valley, which was 
drained by a branch of the Upper Quah-Davic, 
had seemed to them the perfection of solitude 
and remoteness. For three years now they had 
been coming to it every spring with the first of 
the northern flight. But this spring their solitude 
had been invaded. A pioneer, a squatter, with a 
buxom wife and several noisy children, had come 
and built a cabin on the shore of the lake. To 
be sure, the lake was large enough to overlook 
and forget such a small invasion, but for the 
loons it was a great matter. That cabin, those 
voices, and laughter, and axe-strokes, and some- 
times gun-shots, though almost a mile away from 
their nesting-place, were a detestable and unpar- 
donable intrusion. 

The loon was just about to resume his fishing 
— a business which, on account of his phenomenal 
appetite, took up most of his time — when once 



A TORPEDO IN FEATHERS 157 

more a movement in the bushes caught his 
vigilant eye. At the same instant a flash of 
white fire jetted through the leafy screen, a vicious 
report rang out, and a shower of shot cut the 
water into spurting streaks all about him. But 
he was not there. Inconceivably swift, he had 
dived at the flash itself. The lead that would 
have riddled him struck the empty swirl where 
he had vanished. A lanky youth with a gun 
stepped out from behind the bushes, stared in 
sulky disappointment, and presently strolled oflf 
down the shore to look for less elusive game. 

The shattered calm of the lake surface had 
time to rebuild itself before the loon reappeared. 
A hundred yards away from the spot where he 
had dived, his head thrust itself above the water, 
a tiny black speck on the silvery sheen. It 
disappeared again instantly. When it once more 
came to the surface, it was so far out from shore 
that its owner felt safe. After a few moments 
devoted to inspection of the hunter's retreating 
form, the loon arose completely and sent a long 
derisive peal of his wild laughter echoing down 
the lake. The lanky youth turned and shook 
his fist at him, as if threatening to settle the score 
at a later day. 

The loon had come by this time to a part of 
the lake where the depth was not more than six 



158 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

or seven feet, and the bottom was of rich firm 
mud, covered with rank growths. Here and 
there a solitary lily-plant, a stray from the 
creamy-blossomed, nectar-breathing colony over 
in the near-by cove, lifted to the surface its long 
pipe-like stems and flat sliding disks of leaves. 
It was a favorite resort, this, of almost every 
kind of fish that inhabited the lake, except, of 
course, of the minnows and other little fry, who 
would have been promptly made to serve as food 
for their bigger kinsmen had they ventured into 
so fatal a neighborhood. 

Floating tranquilly, the loon caught sight of 
the silvery sides of a fat chub, balancing just 
above the bottom, beside one of the slender pipes 
of lily-stalk. The fish was lazily opening and 
closing its crimson gills, indifferent and with a 
well-fed air. It hung at a depth of perhaps 
six feet, and at a distance of perhaps sixteen 
or twenty. So smoothly as scarcely to leave 
a swirl on the surface, the loon dived straight 
down, then darted for the fish at a terrific 
pace. His powerful feet, folding up and open- 
ing out at each lightning-swift stroke, propelled 
him like a torpedo just shot from tube, and 
tiny bubbles, formed by the air caught under his 
feathers, flicked upward along his course. 

The chub caught sight of this shape of doom 



A TORPEDO IN FEATHERS 159 

rushing upon him through the golden tremor of 
the water. He shot off in a panic, seeking some 
deep crevice or some weed-thicket dense enough 
to hide him. But the loon was almost at his tail. 
There was no crevice to be found, and the weed 
thickets were too sparse and open to conceal him. 
This way and that he darted, doubling and twist- 
ing frantically around every stalk or stone. But 
in spite of his bulk, the loon followed each turn 
with the agility of an eel. The loosed silt boiled 
up in wreaths behind his violent passage, and the 
weeds swayed in the wake of the thrusting webs. 
In less than a minute the chase — the turmoil of 
which drove every other fish, large or small, in 
terror from the feeding-ground — came suddenly 
to an end. Rising abruptly with the fish gripped 
in his great beak, the loon burst out upon the 
surface, sending shoreward a succession of circling 
ripples. Without ceremony he gulped his meal. 
Then, swimming rather low in the water, and 
with head thrust out before him, he hurried to 
his nesting-place on the islet, as if he thought he 
had been too long away from his domestic duties. 
The spot on the islet where the loons had 
their nest was almost unconcealed. It was in 
a grassy cup within four or five feet of the 
water's edge, and sheltered only by a thin 
screen of bushes on the landward side. Tow- 



160 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

ard the sky it was quite open. There had 
seemed to be little need of concealment be- 
fore the intruder, man, came to the lake. The 
islet was too far from the main shore to be in 
danger from the visits of foxes or bears, fishers 
or raccoons. And as for the sky — well, the 
loon had little fear of anything that flew. Be- 
cause of this lack of apprehension from sky- 
ward, even his coloring was not very pro- 
tective, his glossy black, barred and mottled 
with pure white, being fairly conspicuous 
against the grays, and greens, and browns 
which surrounded the nest. Neither he nor 
his mate had any particular objection to being 
seen by any marauder of the air. Even the 
murderous goshawk, or the smaller but even 
more fearless duck-hawk, would know better 
than to swoop down upon the uplifted dagger 
of a nesting loon. And as for the eagle, 
though doubtless strong enough to master 
such an antagonist in the end, he is wise 
enough to know that the loon's punishing 
beak and bulldog courage in defence of the 
nest would make the victory an expensive 
and painful one. 

But there was one enemy besides man 
whom the loons had cause to fear, even on 
their secluded islet. They hated the mink 



A TORPEDO IN FEATHERS 161 

with a well-founded hate. He could easily 
swim out to discover and rob their nest ; and 
if he should find it for a moment unguarded, 
his agility would enable him to keep well 
clear of their avenging wrath. On the nest 
neither male nor female feared to meet the 
mink's attack, their lithe necks and unerring 
quickness of thrust being sufficient defence 
even against so formidable a robber. But 
their movements on land — an awkward, flop- 
ping series of waddles — were so slow that, 
in the case of a mink arriving, the precious 
eggs would be safe only while actually covered. 
A big mink had been seen that very morning, 
prowling down the opposite shore, and both 
birds were uneasy. They seemed now to be 
taking counsel upon that or some other equally 
important matter. 

For the next few days, however, the life 
of the loons was tranquil, with good fishing 
to content their appetites and no untoward 
event to make them anxious. Then came a 
day when the patient mother on her nest 
could not conceal her happiness and her 
excitement, when the male, forgetful of meals, 
stood for hours at a time in interested ex- 
pectancy beside the nest. The strong chicks 
within the eggs were beginning to stir and 



162 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

chip the shell. It was not the day that the 
big mink should have chosen for his expedi- 
tion to the islet. 

For several weeks the mink had been on the 
point of swimming out to explore that little patch 
of rocks and grass and bushes, sentinelled by one 
dark fir-tree. Such a secluded spot, out of reach 
of most forest prowlers, might well afford some- 
thing special in the way of good hunting. Hitherto 
one thing or another had always diverted him from 
his purpose, and he had gone off on another trail. 
But to-day nothing intervened. His long, lithe, 
black body curving like a snake's, he ran down 
the bank, lifted his triangular vicious-looking head 
for a survey of the lake, and plunged into the 
water with a low splash. 

Now, the vision of the mink, though sharp 
enough at close quarters, has nothing like the 
power and penetration of the loon's. The mink 
could see the islet, the rocks, the bushes, the 
sentinel fir-tree, but he could not make out the 
figure of the loon standing beside the nest. The 
loon, on the other hand, could see him with 
absolute distinctness, as if not more than fifty feet 
away. 

As has been already noted, the day was not well 
chosen for the mink's trip to the islet. The loon 
stiffened himself with anger, and his round bright 



A TORPEDO IN FEATHERS 163 

eyes hardened implacably. The mother settled 
down closer over the stirring eggs, and turned her 
head to stare malevolently at the long pointed 
trail which the swimmer's head was drawing on the 
lake surface. Her mate stood for some seconds 
as motionless as a charred stump. Then, slipping 
noiselessly down the bank, he glided into the 
water and dived from sight. 

The lake was deep at this point, the main chan- 
nel of the stream — upon which the lake was 
threaded like a great oval bead on a slender string 
— running between the islet and the mainland. 
The loon plunged nearly to the bottom, that he 
might run no risk of being detected by the enemy. 
More than ever like a torpedo, as he pierced the 
brown depths, he darted forward to the attack. 
Two or three great lake trout, seeing the approach 
of the black rushing shape, made way in terror 
and hid in the deepest weed-patch they could find. 
But the loon was not thinking of fish. The 
most tempting tit-bit in the lake at that moment 
might have brushed against his feathers with 
impunity. 

At last, still far ahead of him, he saw the en- 
emy's approach. As he looked upward through 
the water, the under surface was like a radiant but 
half transparent mirror, on which the tiniest float- 
ing object, even a fly or a wild-cherry petal, stood 



164 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

out with amazing distinctness. The dark body 
of the swimming mink was large and black and 
menacing against its setting of silver, and the 
ripples spread away from his chin, ever widening, 
till they faded on the shore behind him. The 
loon kept straight on till the mink was almost 
above him, then he turned and shot upward. 

Thinking, doubtless, of some wild duck's nest, 
well filled with large green eggs, which he would 
devour at his ease after sucking the blood of the 
brooding mother, the mink swam on steadily tow- 
ard the islet. The worn gray rocks and fringing 
grass grew nearer, and the details began to sepa- 
rate themselves to his fierce little eyes. Presently 
he made out the black shape of the female loon 
sitting on her nest and eying him. That prom- 
ised something interesting. The blood leaped 
in his veins, and he raced forward at redoubled 
speed, for the mink goes into his frays with a 
rampant blood-lust that makes him always formi- 
dable, even to creatures of twice his weight. 

It was just at this moment that his alert senses 
took note of a strange vague heaving in the water 
beneath him, a sort of dull and broad vibration. 
Swiftly he ducked his head, to see if the whole 
lake-bottom was rising up at him. But he had 
no time to see anything. It was as if a red-hot 
iron was jabbed straight upward through the 



A TORPEDO IN FEATHERS 165 

tender back part of his throat, and a swarm of 
stars exploded in his brain. Then he knew noth- 
ing more. The loon's steel-like bill had pierced 
to and penetrated the base of the skull, and with 
one convulsive kick, the robber's body straight- 
ened itself out upon the water. Shaking his head 
like an angry terrier, he wrenched his bill free 
and hurried back to reassure his mate, leaving 
the body of the mink to sink languidly to the 
bottom. Here, among the weeds, it was pres- 
ently discovered by the eels and crawfish, faithful 
scavengers, who saw to it that there should be 
nothing left to pollute the sweet lake-waters. 

On the following day the two awkward, dingy- 
hued, downy chicks were hatched, and thenceforth 
the parents were kept busy supplying their ex- 
tremely healthy appetites. The havoc wrought 
among the finny hordes — the trout and " togue " 1 
and chub, the red-fins, shiners, and minnows — 
was enormous. The loon chicks, enterprising 
and industrious, speedily learned to help their 
parents by hunting the small fry in the sunlit 
shallows along shore. 

But the loon family were not the only ardent 
fishermen on those waters. The new-comers, 

1 The " togue" is a peculiar gray lake trout, of northern 
New Brunswick, which grows to a great size, and is caught 
with bait or a spoon. 



1 66 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

the man family, they too liked fish, and had no 
mean skill in catching them. In fact, their methods 
were stupidly and slaughterously destructive, well 
calculated to quite draw out the lake in two or 
three seasons. They set a big purse-seine right 
across the channel, and, worst of all, they dragged 
the deep dark pools, wherein, now that the waters 
were growing warmer under the mid-June sun, 
the biggest trout and " togue " were wont to 
gather for coolness. Their own thought was to 
get their larder well stocked with salted fish 
against the coming winter. Future winters might 
look out for themselves. 

For some time the great loon, though more 
enterprising and wide-ranging than his prudent 
mate, had kept careful distance from the nets 
and net-stakes, as from all the other visible mani- 
festations of man. But at last he grew accustomed 
to the tall immovable stakes in the channel which 
supported the purse-seine. He concluded that 
they were harmless, or even impotent, and decided 
to investigate them. 

As he approached, the dim meshes of the net, 
shimmering vaguely in the bright water, excited 
his suspicions. He sheered oflf warily and swam 
around the seine at a prudent distance. At last 
he found the opening. There seemed to be no 
danger anywhere in sight, so, after some hesitation, 



A TORPEDO IN FEATHERS 167 

he sailed in. The ordered curving rows of the 
stakes, the top line of the net, beaded with a few 
floats, here and there rising above the water — it 
was all very curious, but it did not seem in any 
way hostile. He eyed it scornfully. For what 
was neither dangerous nor useful he had a highly 
practical contempt. Having satisfied his curiosity, 
and allayed a certain uneasiness with which he 
had always regarded the great set-net, he turned 
to swim out again. But at this moment he chanced 
to look down. 

The sight that met his eyes was one to stir the 
blood of any fisherman. He was just over the 
" purse " — that fatal chamber whence so few who 
enter it ever find the exit. The narrow space was 
crowded with every kind of fish that frequented 
the lake, except for the slim eels and the small 
fry who could swim through the meshes. It was 
the chance of a loon's lifetime. Flashing down- 
ward, he darted this way and that ecstatically among 
the frantic prisoners, transfixing half a dozen in 
succession, to make sure of them, before he seized 
a big trout for his immediate meal. Gripping the 
victim savagely in his bill, he slanted toward the 
surface, and plunged into a slack bight of the net. 

Luckily for him, he was within a foot of the 
air before he struck the deceitful meshes. Carried 
on by the impetus of his rush, he bore the net 



1 68 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

upward with him, and emerged into the full sun. 
In the shock of his surprise he dropped the fish, 
and at the same time gulped his lungs full of 
fresh air. For perhaps half a minute, he thrust 
and flapped and tore furiously, expecting to break 
through the elusive obstacle, which yielded so 
freely that he could get no hold upon it, yet 
always thrust him back with a suave but inexo- 
rable persistence. At length, realizing himself 
foiled in this direction, he sank downward like a 
stone, thinking to back out of the struggle and 
rise somewhere else. But, to his horror, the 
bight of the net came down with him, refusing to 
be left. In his struggles he had completely en- 
meshed himself. 

And now, probably for the very first time in a 
not uneventful life, the great loon lost his head. 
He began to fight blindly, overwhelmed by panic 
terror. Plunging, kicking, beating with half- 
fettered wings, striking with his beak in a semi- 
paralyzed fashion because he had not room to 
stretch his neck to its full length, he was soon 
utterly exhausted. Moreover, he was more than 
half drowned. At last, a dimness coming over the 
golden amber light, he gave up in despair. With 
a feeble despairing stroke of his webbed feet, he 
strove to get back to the surface. Happily for 
him, the net in this direction was not relentless. 



A TORPEDO IN FEATHERS 169 

It yielded without too much resistance, and the 
hopelessly entangled prisoner came to the top. 
Lying there in the meshes, he could at least draw 
breath. 

When, a little later in the day, he saw a boat 
approaching up the lake with two of the dreaded 
man creatures in it, he gave one final mighty 
struggle, which lashed the water into foam and 
sent the imprisoned fish into fresh paroxysms ; 
and then, with the stoicism which some of the 
wild creatures can display in the moment of su- 
preme and hopeless peril, he lay quite still, eying 
the foe defiantly. 

One of the beings in the boat was that lanky 
youth whose attempt to shoot the loon had been 
such a conspicuous failure. The other was the 
lanky youth's father, the pioneer himself. At 
the sight of the trussed-up captive, the youth 
shouted exultantly — 

" It's that durn loon what's eatin' all the fish 
in the lake ! I'll fix his fishin' ! " and, lifting 
his oar from the thole-pins, he raised it to strike 
the helpless bird. 

" Don't be sich a durn fool, Zeb ! " interrupted 
the father. " Ye'll get more money for that bird 
alive, down to Fredericton, than all the fish in 
the net's worth. A loon like that ain't common. 
He's a beauty ! " 



170 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

The youth dropped his oar and leaned over to 
snatch up the prize. But he jumped back with 
alacrity as his father snapped : " Look out ! " 

cc What for ? " he demanded, rather sheepishly. 

" Why," replied the older man, cc he'll stick 
you like a pig with that knife beak of his'n, if ye 
don't look sharp ! Reach me yer jacket. We'll 
wrap up his head till we kin get him clear o' the 
net." 

The youth obeyed. Helplessly swathed in 
the heavy homespun jacket, whose strong man 
smell enraged and daunted him, the great bird 
was disentangled from the net and lifted into the 
boat. Laughingly the father passed the bundle 
along the gunwale to his son. 

But swathing a powerful bird in a jacket is a 
more or less inexact undertaking, as many have 
found in experimenting with wounded hawks and 
eagles. By some lucky wriggle the loon got his 
head free. Instantly, with all the force of his 
powerful neck-muscles, he drove his beak half- 
way through the fleshy part of his old enemy's 
arm. With a startled yell the lad dropped him. 
He bounded from the gunwale and rolled into 
the water. The man snatched at him and caught 
a flopping sleeve of the jacket. The jacket 
promptly and neatly unrolled, and the loon, div- 
ing deep, was out of sight in an eye-wink, leaving 



A TORPEDO IN FEATHERS 171 

his would-be jailers to express themselves accord- 
ing to their mood. When he came to the surface 
for breath, he was a hundred yards away, and on 
the other side of the boat, and as he thrust little 
more than his beak and nostrils above water, he 
was not detected. 

A few minutes more, and he was laughing 
derisively from the other side of the islet, swim- 
ming in safety with his mate and his two energetic 
chicks. Nevertheless, for all his triumph and 
the discomfiture of his foes, the grim experience 
had put him out of conceit with the lake. That 
same night, when the white moon rode high over 
the jagged spruce ridges, a hollow globe of en- 
chantment, he led his little family straight up the 
river, mile after mile, till they reached another 
lake. It was a small lake, shut in by brooding 
hills, with iron shores, and few fish in its inhospi- 
table waters, but it was remote from man and his 
works. So here the outraged bird was content 
to establish himself till the hour should return for 
migrants to fly south. 



HOW A CAT PLAYED 
ROBINSON CRUSOE 



How a Cat Played Robinson 
Crusoe 

THE island was a mere sandbank off the 
low flat coast. Not a tree broke its bleak 
levels, not even a shrub. But the long, sparse, 
gritty stalks of the marsh-grass clothed it every- 
where above tide-mark, and a tiny rivulet of 
sweet water, flowing from a spring at its centre, 
drew a riband of inland herbage and tenderer 
green across the harsh and sombre yellow-gray 
of the grass. One would not have chosen the 
island as an alluring place to set one's habitation, 
yet at its seaward end, where the changing tides 
were never still, stood a spacious, one-storied, 
wide-verandahed cottage, with a low shed behind 
it. The one virtue that this lone plot of sea- 
rejected sand could boast was coolness. When 
the neighbor mainland would be sweltering, 
day and night alike, under a breathless heat, 
out here on the island there was always a cool 
wind blowing. Therefore a wise city dweller 
had appropriated the sea waif, and built his 
summer home thereon, where the tonic airs might 

i75 



176 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

bring back the rose to the pale cheeks of his 
children. 

The family came to the island toward the 
end of June. In the first week of September 
they went away, leaving every door and window 
of house and shed securely shuttered, bolted or 
barred, against the winter's storms. A roomy 
boat, rowed by two fishermen, carried them 
across the half mile of racing tides that separated 
them from the mainland. The elders of the 
household were not sorry to get back to the 
distractions of the world of men, after two months 
of the companionship of wind and sun and waves 
and waving grass-tops. But the children went 
with tear-stained faces. They were leaving be- 
hind them their household pet, the invariable 
comrade of their migrations, a handsome moon- 
faced cat, striped like a tiger. The animal had 
disappeared two days before, vanishing mysteri- 
ously from the naked face of the island. The 
only reasonable explanation seemed to be that 
she had been snapped up by a passing eagle. 

The cat, meanwhile, was fast prisoner at the 
other end of the island, hidden beneath a broken 
barrel and some hundredweight of drifted sand. 

The old barrel, with the staves battered out 
on one side in some past encounter with the 
tides, had stood half buried on the crest of a 



HOW A CAT PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE 177 

sand-ridge raised by the long prevailing wind. 
Under its lee the cat had found a sheltered 
hollow, full of sun, where she had been wont to 
lie curled up for hours at a time, basking and 
sleeping. Meanwhile, the sand had been steadily 
piling itself higher and higher behind the un- 
stable barrier. At last, it had piled too high, 
and suddenly, before a stronger gust, the barrel 
had come toppling over beneath a mass of sand, 
burying the sleeping cat out of sight and light ; 
but at the same time the sound half of the barrel 
had formed a safe roof to her prison, and she 
was neither crushed nor smothered. When the 
children, in their anxious search all over the 
island, came upon the mound of fine white sand, 
they gave it but one careless look. They could 
not hear the faint cries that came at intervals 
from the close darkness within. So they went 
away sorrowfully, little dreaming that their friend 
was imprisoned almost beneath their feet. 

For three days the prisoner kept up her inter- 
mittent appeals for help. On the third day the 
wind changed, and presently blew up a gale. In 
a few hours it had uncovered the barrel. At one 
corner a tiny spot of light appeared. Eagerly 
the cat stuck her paw through the hole. When 
she withdrew it again, the hole was considerably 
enlarged. She took the hint, and fell to scratch- 



178 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

ing. At first her efforts were rather aimless ; but 
presently, whether by good luck or quick sagacity, 
she learned to make her scratching more effective. 
The opening rapidly enlarged, and she squeezed 
her way out. 

The wind was tearing madly across the island, 
filled with flying sand. The seas hurled them- 
selves trampling up the beach, with the uproar of 
a bombardment. The scourged grasses lay pallid, 
bowed flat in long quivering ranks. Over the 
turmoil the sun stared down from a deep unclouded 
blue. The cat, when she first met the full force 
of the gale, was fairly blown off her feet. As soon 
as she could recover herself, she crouched low and 
darted into the grass for shelter. But there was 
little shelter there, the long stalks being held down 
almost level as if by an implacable hand. Through 
their lashed lines, however, she sped straight be- 
fore the gale, making for the cottage at the other 
end of the island, where she would find, as she 
fondly imagined, not only food and shelter, but 
loving comfort to make her forget her terrors. 

Unutterably still and desolate in the bright 
sunshine, and under the howling of the wind, the 
house frightened her. She could not understand 
the tight-closed shutters, the blind unresponding 
doors that would no longer open to her anxious 
appeal. The wind swept her savagely across the 



HOW A CAT PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE 179 

naked veranda. Climbing with difficulty to the 
dining-room window-sill, where so often she had 
been let in, she clung there a few moments and 
yowled heart-brokenly. Then, in a sudden panic, 
she jumped down and ran to the shed. That, too, 
was closed. She had never seen the shed doors 
closed, and could not understand it. Cautiously 
she crept around the foundations, but those had 
been honestly and efficiently constructed. There 
was no such thing as getting in that way. On 
every side it was nothing but a dead face, dead 
and forbidding, that the old familiar house con- 
fronted her with. 

The cat had always been so coddled and pam- 
pered by the children that she had had no need 
to forage for herself; but, fortunately for her now, 
she had learned to hunt the marsh-mice and grass- 
sparrows for amusement. So now, being raven- 
ous from her long fast under the sand, she slunk 
mournfully away from the deserted house, and 
crept along, under the lee of a sand-ridge, to a 
little grassy hollow which she knew. Here the 
gale caught only the tops of the grasses, bend- 
ing but not prostrating them ; and here in the 
warmth and comparative calm, the furry little 
marsh-folk, mice and shrews, were going about 
their business undisturbed. The cat, quick and 
stealthy, soon caught one, and eased the ferocity 



180 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

of her hunger. She caught several. And then, 
making her way back to the house, she spent 
hours in heart-sick prowling, around it and around, 
sniffing and peering, yowling piteously on threshold 
and window-sill, and every now and then being 
blown ignominiously across the smooth naked 
expanse of the veranda floor. At last, hopelessly 
discouraged, she curled herself up out of the wind, 
beneath the children's window, and went to sleep. 
On the following day the gale died down, and 
the salt-grass once more lifted its tops, full of flit- 
ting birds and small brown-and-yellow autumn 
butterflies, under the golden September sun. 
Desolate though the island was, it swarmed, never- 
theless, with the minute busy life of the grass- 
stems and the sand-flats. Mice, crickets, sand- 
hoppers — the cat had no need to go hungry 
or unoccupied. She went all over house and 
shed again, from foundation to roof and chimney- 
top, yowling from time to time in a great hollow, 
melancholy voice that might have been heard all 
across the island had there been any one to hear, 
and again, from time to time, meowing in small 
piteous tones no bigger than a kitten's. For hours 
at a time when hunger did not drive her to the 
hunt, she would sit expectant on the window-ledge, 
or before the door, or on the veranda steps, 
hoping that at any instant door or window might 



HOW A CAT PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE 181 

open, and dear familiar voices call her in. When 
she did go hunting, she hunted with peculiar 
ferocity, as if to avenge herself for some great but 
dimly apprehended wrong. 

In spite of her loneliness and grief, the life of 
the island prisoner during the next two or three 
weeks was by no means one of hardship. Besides 
her abundant food of birds and mice, she quickly 
learned to catch tiny fish in the mouth of the rivu- 
let, where salt water and fresh water met. It was 
an exciting game, and she became expert at dashing 
the gray tour-cod and blue-and-silver sand-lance 
far up the slope with a sweep of her armed paw. 
But when the equinoctial storms roared down upon 
the island, with furious rain and low black clouds 
torn to shreds, then life became more difficult for 
her. Game all took to cover, where it was hard 
to find — vanishing mysteriously. It was hard 
to get around in the drenched and lashing grass, 
and, moreover, she loathed wet. Most of the 
time she went hungry, sitting sullen and desolate 
under the lee of the house, glaring out defiantly 
at the rush and battling tumult of the waves. 

The storm lasted nearly ten days before it blew 
itself clean out. On the eighth day the abandoned 
wreck of a small Nova Scotia schooner drove 
ashore, battered out of all likeness to a ship. But, 
hulk as it was, it had passengers of a sort. A 



182 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

horde of bedraggled rats got through the surf and 
scurried into the hiding of the grass-roots. They 
promptly made themselves at home, burrowing 
under the grass and beneath old half-buried 
timbers, and carrying panic into the ranks of the 
mice and shrews. When the storm was over, the 
cat had a decided surprise in her first long hunt- 
ing expedition. Something had rustled the grass 
heavily, and she trailed it, expecting a particularly 
large fat marsh-mouse. When she pounced and 
alighted upon an immense old ship's rat, many- 
voyaged and many-battled, she got badly bitten. 
Such an experience had never before fallen to her 
lot. At first she felt so injured that she was on the 
point of backing out and running away. Then 
her latent pugnacity awoke, and the fire of far-off 
ancestors. She flung herself into the fight with a 
rage that took no accounting of the wounds she got, 
and the struggle was soon over. Hungry though 
she was, she dragged the slain rat all the way to 
the house, and laid it proudly on the veranda 
floor before the door, as if displaying it to the 
eyes of her vanished friends. For a few moments 
she stood over it, waiting hopefully. Perhaps 
she had a wistful idea that so splendid an offering 
might melt the hearts of the absent ones and per- 
suade them to come back. Nothing happened, 
however, so she sadly dragged the prize down the 



HOW A CAT PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE 183 

steps again to her accustomed lair in the sand, and 
ate it up all but the tail. Her wounds, faithfully 
licked, soon healed themselves in that clean and 
tonic air, and after that, having learned how to 
handle such big game, she no more got bitten. 

During the first full moon after her abandon- 
ment, the first week in October, the island was 
visited by still weather, with sharp night frosts. 
The cat discovered then that it was most exciting 
to hunt by night and do her sleeping in the day- 
time. It was a natural reversion to the instincts 
of her ancestors, but it came to her as a discovery. 
She found that now, under the strange whiteness 
of the moon, all her game was astir, except the 
birds. And the birds had all fled to the main- 
land during the storm, gathering for the south- 
ward flight. The blanched grasses, she found, 
were now everywhere a-rustle, and everywhere 
vague, spectral, little shapes went darting, with 
thin squeaks, across the ghostly white sands. 
Also, she made the aquaintance of a new bird, 
which she regarded at first uneasily, and then with 
vengeful wrath. This was the brown marsh-owl, 
which came over from the mainland to do some 
autumn mouse-hunting. There were two pairs 
of these big, downy-winged, round-eyed, vora- 
cious hunters, and they did not know there was a 
cat on the island. 



1 84 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

The cat, spying one of them as it swooped 
soundlessly hither and thither over the silvered 
grass-tops, crouched with flattened ears. With 
its wide spread of wing it looked bigger than her- 
self, and the great round face, with hooked beak 
and wild staring eyes, appeared extremely formida- 
ble. However, she was no coward, and presently, 
though not without reasonable caution, she went 
about her hunting. Suddenly the owl caught a 
partial glimpse of her in the grass, probably of 
her ears or head. He swooped, and at the same 
instant she sprang upward to meet the assault, 
spitting and growling harshly, and striking with 
unsheathed claws. With a frantic flapping of his 
great wings, the owl checked himself and drew 
back into the air, just escaping the clutch of those 
indignant claws. But after that the marsh-owls 
were careful to give her a wide berth. They 
realized that the black-striped animal, with the 
quick spring and the clutching claws, was not to be 
interfered with. They perceived that she was 
some relation of that dangerous prowler, the lynx. 
But if they were disturbed by the presence on 
the island of so dangerous a rival as the cat, they 
were amply compensated by the coming of the 
rats, who afforded them fine hunting of a kind 
which they had never before experienced. In 
spite of all this hunting, however, the furry life 



HOW A CAT PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE 185 

of the marsh-grass was so teeming, so inexhaustible, 
that the depredations of cat, rats, and owls were 
powerless to make more than a passing impression 
upon it. So the hunting and the merrymaking 
went on side by side under the indifferent moon, 
and the untouched swarms whom Fate passed by 
were as indifferent as the moon herself to the 
mysterious disappearances of their fellows. 

As winter drew on, with bursts of sharp cold 
and changing winds that forced her to be contin- 
ually changing her refuge, the cat grew more and 
more unhappy. She felt her homelessness keenly. 
Nowhere on the whole island could she find a 
nook where she might feel secure from both wind 
and rain. As for the old barrel, the first cause of 
her misfortunes, there was no help in that. The 
winds had long ago turned it completely over, 
open to the sky, then drifted it full of sand and 
reburied it. And in any case the cat would have 
been afraid to go near it again ; she had no short 
memory. So it came about that she alone, of all 
the island dwellers, had no shelter to turn to 
when the real winter arrived, with snows that 
smothered the grass-tops out of sight, and frosts 
that lined the shore with grinding ice-cakes. 
The rats had their holes under the buried frag- 
ments of wreckage ; the mice and shrews had 
their deep warm tunnels ; the owls had nests in 



186 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

hollow trees far away in the forests of the main- 
land. But the cat, shivering and frightened, 
could do nothing but crouch against the blind 
walls of the unrelenting house, and let the snow 
whirl itself and pile itself about her. 

And now, in her misery, she found her food 
cut off. The mice ran secure in their hidden run- 
ways, where the grass-roots on either side of them 
gave them easy and abundant provender. The 
rats, too, were out of sight, digging burrows them- 
selves in the soft snow, in the hope of intercepting 
some of the tunnels of the mice, and now and 
then snapping up an unwary passer-by. The ice- 
fringe, crumbling and heaving under the ruthless 
tide, put an end to her fishing. She would have 
tried to capture one of the formidable owls, in her 
hunger, but the owls no longer came to the island. 
They would return, no doubt, later in the season, 
when the snow had hardened, and the mice had 
begun to come out and play on the surface, but 
for the present they were following an easier chase 
in the deeps of the upland forest. 

When the snow had stopped falling, and the 
sun came out again, there fell such keen cold as 
the cat had never felt before. Starving as she 
was, she could not sleep, but kept ceaselessly on 
the prowl. This was fortunate for her, for had 
she gone to sleep, without any more shelter than 



HOW A CAT PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE 187 

the side of the house, she would never have 
wakened again. In her restlessness she wandered 
to the farther side of the island, where, in a some- 
what sheltered and sunny recess of the shore, fac- 
ing the mainland, she found a patch of bare sand, 
free of ice-cakes and just uncovered by the tide. 
Opening upon this recess were the tiny entrances 
to several of the mouse-tunnels. 

Close beside one of these holes, in the snow, the 
cat crouched, quiveringly intent. For ten min- 
utes or more she waited, never so much as twitch- 
ing a whisker. At last a mouse thrust out its 
little pointed head. Not daring to give it time 
to change its mind or take alarm, she pounced. 
The mouse, glimpsing the doom ere it fell, 
doubled back upon itself in the narrow runway. 
Hardly realizing what she did, in her desperation 
the cat plunged head and shoulders into the snow, 
reaching blindly after the vanished prize. By 
great good luck she clutched it and held it. 

It was her first meal in four bitter days. 

Now she had learned a lesson. Naturally 
clever, and her wits sharpened by her fierce neces- 
sities, she had grasped the idea that it was possi- 
ble to follow her prey a little way into the snow. 
She had not realized that the snow was so pene- 
trable. She had quite obliterated the door of 
this particular runway, but she went on and 



1 88 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

crouched beside another. Here she had to wait 
a long time before an adventurous mouse came to 
peer out. But this time she showed that she had 
grasped her lesson effectively. It was straight at 
the side of the entrance that she pounced, where 
instinct told her that the body of the mouse would 
be. One outstretched paw thus cut off the 
quarry's retreat. Her tactics were completely 
successful, and as her head went plunging into 
the fluffly whiteness, she felt the prize between 
her paws. 

Her hunger now fairly appeased, she found 
herself immensely excited over this new fashion 
of hunting. Often before had she waited at 
mouse-holes, but never had she found it possible 
to break down the walls and invade the holes 
themselves. It was a thrilling idea. As she 
crept toward another hole, a mouse scurried 
swiftly up the sand and darted into it. The cat, 
too late to catch him before he disappeared, tried 
to follow him. Scratching clumsily but hopefully, 
she succeeded in penetrating the full length of 
her body into the snow. Of course she found no 
sign of the fugitive, which was by this time racing 
in safety down some dim transverse tunnel. Her 
eyes, mouth, whiskers, and fur full of the powdery 
white particles, she backed out, much disappointed. 
But in that moment she had realized that it was 



HOW A CAT PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE 189 

much warmer in there beneath the snow than out 
in the stinging air. It was a second and vitally 
important lesson. And though she was probably- 
unconscious of having learned it, she instinctively 
put the new lore into practice a little while later. 
Having succeeded in catching yet another mouse, 
for which her appetite made no immediate de- 
mand, she carried it back to the house and laid 
it down in tribute on the veranda steps, while 
she meowed and stared hopefully at the desolate 
snow-draped door. Getting no response, she 
carried the dead mouse down with her to the hol- 
low behind the drift, which had been caused by 
the bulging front of the bay-window on the end of 
the house. Here she curled herself up forlornly, 
thinking to have a wink of sleep. 

But the still cold was too searching. She 
looked at the sloping wall of snow beside 
her, and cautiously thrust her paw into it. 
It was very soft and light; it seemed to 
offer practically no resistance. She pawed away 
in an awkward fashion till she had scooped out 
a sort of tiny cave. Gently she pushed her- 
self into it, pressing back the snow on every 
side, till she had room to turn around. Then 
turn around she did several times, as so many 
dogs do in getting their beds arranged to their 
liking. In this process she not only packed 



190 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

down the snow beneath her, but she rounded out 
for herself a snug chamber with a comparatively 
narrow doorway. From this snowy retreat she 
gazed forth with a solemn air of possession, then 
went to sleep with a sense of comfort, of " homey- 
ness," such as she had never before felt since the 
disappearance of her friends. 

Having thus conquered her environment, and 
won herself the freedom of the winter wild, her 
life, though strenuous, was no longer one of any 
terrible hardship. With patience at the mouse- 
holes, she could catch enough to eat, and in her 
snowy den she slept warm and secure. In a little 
while, when a crust had formed over the surface, 
the mice took to coming out at night and holding 
revels on the snow. Then the owls, too, came 
back, and the cat, having tried to catch one, got 
sharply bitten and clawed before she realized the 
propriety of letting it go. After this experience 
she decided that owls, on the whole, were meant 
to be let alone. But, for all that, she found it 
fine hunting out there on the bleak, unfenced, 
white reaches of the snow. 

Thus mistress of the situation, she found the 
winter slipping by without further serious trials. 
Only once, toward the end of January, did Fate 
send her a bad quarter of an hour. On the heels 
of a peculiarly bitter cold snap, a huge white owl 



HOW A CAT PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE 191 

from the Arctic barrens came one night to the 
island. The cat, taking observations from the 
corner of the veranda, caught sight of him. One 
look was enough to assure her that this was a 
very different kind of visitor from the brown 
marsh-owls. She slipped inconspicuously down 
into her burrow, and until the great white owl 
went away some twenty-four hours later, she 
kept herself discreetly out of sight. 

When spring came back to the island, with the 
nightly shrill chorus of fluting frogs in the shallow 
sedgy pools, and the young grass alive with nest- 
ing birds, the prisoner's life became almost luxu- 
rious in its easy abundance. But now she was 
once more homeless, since her snug den had 
vanished with the snow. This did not matter 
much to her now, however, for the weather grew 
warmer and more tranquil day by day, and, more- 
over, she herself, in being forced back upon long 
latent instincts, had learned the heedless vagrancy 
of the wild. Nevertheless, with all her capacity 
for learning and adapting herself, she had not for- 
gotten anything. So when, one day in June, a 
crowded boat came over from the mainland, and 
children's voices, clamoring across the grass-tops, 
broke the desolate silence of the island, the cat 
heard, and sprang up out of her sleep on the 
veranda steps. For one second she stood listen- 



192 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

ing intently. Then, almost as a dog would have 
done, and as few of her supercilious tribe ever 
condescend to do, she went racing across to the 
landing-place, to be snatched up into the arms of 
four happy children at once, and to have her fine 
fur ruffled to a state which it would cost her an 
hour's assiduous toilet to put in order. 



LITTLE BULL OF THE 
BARRENS 



Little Bull of the Barrens 

THROUGH the thick drive of the snow- 
flakes — small, hard, bitter flakes, borne 
on the long wind of the terrible Coppermine bar- 
rens — the man and the beast stood staring at 
each other, motionless. In the beast's eyes was 
a heavy wonder, mixed with curiosity and dread. 
Never before had he seen any being like this 
erect slim shape, veiled and vague and dark in 
the whirling drift. He felt it to be dangerous, 
but he was loath to tear himself away from the 
scrutiny of it. 

The man, on the other hand, had neither won- 
der, curiosity, nor dread in his gaze. He knew 
that the black and massive apparition before him 
was a musk-ox. His first impulse had been to 
snatch up his rifle and shoot, before the beast 
could fade oflf into the white confusion of the 
storm. But his practised eye had told him that 
the animal was an old bull. His necessity was 
not fierce enough to drive him to the eating of 
such flesh — tough and reeking to nausea with 
musk. He wanted a young cow whose meat 
would be tender and sweet as caribou. He was 

195 



196 neighbors unknown 

content to wait, knowing that the herd must be 
near, and would not leave these feeding-grounds 
unless frightened. At this season the black bull, 
there staring at him heavily through the drift, 
would not be solitary. 

The man was a trapper, who was making his 
way down the river to the Hudson Bay Com- 
pany's post at the mouth. Through failure of 
the caribou to come his way according to their 
custom, his supplies had run short, and he was 
seeking the post in good time before the pinch of 
hunger should fix itself upon him. But he had 
had bad luck. The failure of the caribou had hit 
others besides himself. The wolves had suffered 
by it. Perhaps, in their shrewd and savage 
spirits, they had blamed the man for the ab- 
sence of their accustomed quarry. Some weeks 
before his start they had craftily picked off his 
dogs — a reasonable and satisfying retaliation. 
And now the man was hauling the sledge himself. 

In a moment's lift of the storm, the man had 
noted a little valley, a depression in the vast wind- 
swept level of the barrens, lying but a couple of 
stone's-throws aside from the banks of the river 
which was his guide. He knew that there he 
would find a dense growth of the stunted firs 
which spring up wherever they can find shelter 
from the wind. There he knew he would find 



LITTLE BULL OF THE BARRENS 197 

dry stuff in plenty for his fire. There he would 
take covert till the storm should go down and 
suffer him to trail the musk-ox herd. After eying 
the black bull steadily for some minutes, he 
softly turned away, and without haste made for 
the valley of the little firs, dragging the laden 
sledge behind him. 

The black bull snorted thickly and took sev- 
eral steps forward. The strange figure fading 
silently away through the drift evidently feared 
him. A fleeing foe was surely to be followed. 
But that long dark shape crawling at the stranger's 
heels — that looked formidable and very mysteri- 
ous. The beast stopped, shook his head, snorted 
again more loudly, and drew back those few paces 
which he had advanced. Perhaps it was just as 
well not to be too bold in interrogating the un- 
known. After a few moments of hesitation he 
wheeled aside, lifted his massive and shaggy head, 
sniffed the air, listened intently, and withdrew to 
rejoin the little herd, which was lying down and 
contentedly chewing the cud, all indifferent to the 
drive of the polar storm. 

The black bull of the barrens, as he stood and 
eyed contemplatively the resting herd, showed 
small in stature but extraordinarily massive in 
build. A scant six feet in length from muzzle to 
root of tail, and not much over three feet high at 



198 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

the shoulder, he was modelled, nevertheless, on 
lines that for power a mammoth might have 
envied. His square frame was clothed with long 
blackish hair reaching almost to the fetlocks. 
His ponderous head, maned and shaggy, was 
armed with short crescent horns, keen-tipped and 
serviceable for battle. And he carried it swung 
low, muzzle in and front well forward, always 
ready for defence against the enemies of the 
herd. 

The herd numbered some dozen or fifteen 
cows, armed and powerful like their mates, several 
younger bulls, and perhaps a dozen yearling or 
two-year-old calves. At one moment, as the 
fierce drift slackened, they would all be more or 
less visible — shrouded, dark forms with con- 
templative eyes, peacefully ruminating. A mo- 
ment more and they would vanish, as the snow 
again closed down about them. 

It was the old bull alone who seemed to be 
thoroughly on the alert. Hither and thither, 
with a certain slow vigilance, he moved through 
the herd. All at once he lifted his head sharply 
and questioned the air with dilating nostrils, while 
his eyes gleamed with anger and anxiety. The 
next instant he stamped his foot and gave a loud 
abrupt call, half bleat, half bellow. 

Plainly it was a signal well understood. In a 



LITTLE BULL OF THE BARRENS 199 

second the whole herd was on its feet In another, 
with lightning precision, it had formed itself into 
a compact circle, using the watchful leader as the 
basic point of its formation. The calves, butted 
unceremoniously into the centre, hustled one upon 
the other, with uplifted muzzles over each other's 
shoulders and mild eyes staring with startled fright. 
The outer rim of the circle became a fringe of 
sullen lowering foreheads, angry eyes and keen 
horns jutting formidably from snow-powdered 
manes of dark hair. 

Not a member of the musk-ox herd, to the 
youngest calf, but knew very well against what 
enemy the old bull had so suddenly marshalled 
them into fighting phalanx. For some moments, 
however — long, tense, vigilant moments — 
nothing appeared. Then at last, through the 
driving flakes, they caught sight of several gaunt, 
leaping forms, gray and shadowy, which swept 
down upon them in silence out of the storm. 

With terrible suddenness and speed they came, 
these leaping forms, as if they would hurl them- 
selves blindly upon the massed herd. But the 
line of lowered horns never flinched or wavered, 
and with a short snarl from their leader the wolves 
swerved, just in time to escape a savage thrust 
from the old bull. They swerved, strung out 
into line, and went loping round the circle, their 



200 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

narrowed, greenish, merciless eyes glaring into the 
obstinate ones of the musk-oxen. Again and 
again they circled the rampart of horns, again and 
again they drew off and swept up furiously to the 
assault, hoping to find some weak point in the 
defences — some timorous young cow who would 
shrink and swerve at their assault and open a 
breach in the line. But there was no cow in that 
herd afflicted with any such suicidal folly. The 
snow-spotted, lowering line of heads waited un- 
shaken, and presently the wolves — there were 
seven of them — bunched together a few paces 
from the circle and seemed to consider. Two of 
them sat down upon their haunches with their 
tongues hanging out, and eyed the rampart of 
horned fronts evilly, while the others stood with 
their heads together, or prowled restlessly back 
and forth. They might, indeed, with the vast 
leaping power of their long legs and muscular 
haunches, have sprung clear over the line of defence, 
and gained in two seconds the helpless calves in 
the centre; but they knew what that would mean. 
The herd would turn in upon them in a blind, 
uncalculating fury and trample them underfoot. 
For the moment, therefore, they hung waver- 
ing in irresolution, looking for a sign from the 
leader of the pack. 

In the meantime the man had found his valley 



LITTLE BULL OF THE BARRENS 201 

hollow and the shelter of the expected colony of 
dwarf firs. Here the snow lay soft andundrifted. 
In a recess of the fir-thicket he trod it down with 
his snowshoes, and made haste to build himself 
a little fire of dead sticks. Above his head, above 
the shrouded fir-tops, above the rim of the hol- 
low, the storm drove by unabated ; but the 
snowflakes that escaped from the tumult to filter 
down into this retreat were too light and fine and 
dry to interfere with the fire. In two or three 
minutes the flames were crackling up clear and 
free, with little spittings and fine hissings where 
the flakes fell at their thin edges. 

Having collected a pile of dry sticks within 
easy reach, the man stretched a couple of stitched 
caribou hides on poles to form a sloping roof 
over his head, cooked himself a hasty stew of 
pemmican and biscuit, made a hearty meal, and 
squatted before the fire with his back against his 
sledge, to smoke and wait. He knew how to 
wait, like an Indian, when there was anything to 
be gained by it, and his heart, weary of pemmican, 
was set on fresh meat. 

There was no sign of the storm breaking ; 
there was no use hunting in the storm. There 
was nothing to fear, for it was now three weeks 
since he had seen sign of the wolves which had 
eaten his dogs, and he knew that they had ranged 



202 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

off on the trial of the vanished caribou. There was 
nothing to do. He was warm and filled, and free 
from care. Some hundred miles or so away there 
was a post and human companionship, to which he 
looked forward with unhurried content. In due 
time he would arrive there and find it, as always 
before, unchanged, like all else in that land of 
inevitable recurrence. Meanwhile — this after- 
noon, perhaps, or to-morrow — he would shoot 
a young musk-ox cow. He drew his furs well 
about him and dozed off to sleep, knowing that 
the moment the fire began to get dangerously low 
an unfailing instinct would bid him awake to 
tend it. 

While he slept, the storm drove unrelenting 
over the place of his retreat, and kept heaping the 
thin dry snow in fringes and wreaths upon the 
shaggy, lowering fronts of the musk-ox phalanx. 
From time to time, a massive head would shake 
off the burden and emerge black and menacing. 
And always, with unwavering vigilance, the army 
of angry eyes and short sharp horns confronted 
the group of discontented wolves. 

Now, as it chanced, the trapper was wrong in 
his assumption as to the wolves. The truth — 
which would have made a great difference in his 
calculations had he known it — was that they had 
been cautiously trailing him ever since he left his 



LITTLE BULL OF THE BARRENS 



203 



hut. But they knew something of man, those 
wolves, and they feared him. They were not yet 
quite mad with hunger, so they had not yet quite 
plucked up courage to reveal themselves to him, 
still less to commit themselves to an open attack. 
They dreaded his eye, they dreaded his sharp, 
authoritative voice. They dreaded the strange, 
menacing smell of him. They dreaded his mys- 
terious power of striking invisibly from very far 
off. Had they had any choice, they would far 
rather have been running down the caribou than 
trailing this solitary trapper. But the craving 
belly is a hard master, and they had no choice but 
to hasten wherever it scourged them on. More- 
over, they knew along the trail of the man there 
were liable to be pickings, for man, a fastidious 
feeder, never eats all he kills. 

When at last the trail of the man had led them 
into that of the musk-oxen, the pack had been 
glad. So much the more, therefore, their disap- 
pointed rage, when they found the herd ready for 
their attack, and too strong, in point of numbers 
and experienced leadership, to be stampeded. 
Seeing the prey so near, with each moment of 
their discomfiture their hunger and their fury 
grew. 

Suddenly, without visible sign or warning, it 
seemed to boil over all at once. The whole 



204 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

pack sprang together, swift as the snap of a whip, 
into a compact mass, and hurled itself straight 
upon the circle of lowered horns. The charge 
looked irresistible. It seemed that the most 
dauntless must cringe and shrink before it. 

But the point attacked was a strong one in the 
array. It was held by the wise old bull. To 
either side of him the shaggy black heads breathed 
hard or snorted loudly, but not a horn wavered. 
And in the face of this steadfastness the attack 
was not driven home. In the very last fraction 
of a second the leader swerved ; the pack swept 
swiftly aside, but it was very close. As the hind- 
most wolf went by, the old bull lunged forward, 
head and shoulders beyond the circle, with a sav- 
age twist of his short, polished horns. There 
was a startled yelp. He had just managed to 
catch his foe a rending prod in the thick of the 
haunch. The wolf never paused — he was under 
the iron discipline of the pack, — but as he ran he 
left a scarlet trail along the snow behind him. 

To the slow amazement of the herd, their 
enemies now, in the next instant, had vanished 
through the thin whirl of the drift. Heavy heads, 
thrust far out from the phalanx, turned to stare 
after them. There was nothing to be seen but the 
endless, sheeted procession of the snow. There 
was nothing to be heard but the muffled rush of 



LITTLE BULL OF THE BARRENS 205 

the wind and their own snortings and tramplings. 
For a long time, however, they kept their array 
unbroken, fearing a trick on the part of their ad- 
versaries. Then at last the old bull, after sniffing 
the wind in all directions with uplifted muzzle, 
stepped forth from the ranks. Immediately the 
circle dissolved. There was a moment of whirl- 
ing and grunting, of butting at stupid calves or 
reorganizing the array, then, at a swift walk, the 
whole herd moved off toward the northeast, where 
they knew of a region of low huddled hills which 
would give them the kind of shelter that they loved. 

In the meantime the pack, maddened by failure 
and ravenous from the view of food denied, had 
resumed the trail of the man. They were different 
beings now from the wary skulkers who had been 
following him from afar. Silent and swift, their 
eyes flaming coldly and their thin lips wrinkled 
back from long white fangs, they swept over the 
brink and down into the windless hollow of the 
stunted firs. 

The man, sleeping in his furs by the little fire, 
had a bad dream. With a struggle and a yell he 
awoke from it, to find himself half erect, upon one 
knee, battling frantically for his life. One great 
hairy form he had clutched by the throat with 
both hands, as its fangs snapped within an inch of 
his face, and its huge hot breath daunted him with 



206 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

a sense that the end of things had come. With a 
monstrous effort he hurled it off, but in the same 
moment he was borne down from behind. It 
seemed to him that a wave of furred, fighting 
bodies, enormous and irresistible, went over him, 
blotting out everything, even to the desire of life. 
He was but half conscious of the fangs that sank 
into his flesh, strangely without pain. He was 
but half conscious of struggling — the mere in- 
stinctive struggle of his strong muscles, and already 
condemned as futile by his aloof and scornful 
spirit. Then nothing but a knot of great gray 
wolves, tussling and snarling over something on 
the snow. 

«*S* •$* *t* *t* 

•*• •** *** *$* 

After everything on the sledge had been torn 
open and investigated, and scattered over the 
blood-stained snow, the wolves drew off to a little 
distance from the fire, which they hated and 
dreaded. It was a victory which would make 
that pack for the future tenfold more dangerous. 
They had dared and vanquished man. But what 
was one man and a little bag of dry pemmican to 
such hunger as theirs ? All at once, as if moved 
simultaneously by one impulse, they gathered, sped 
up out of the firs into the wind, and swept away 
through the storm on the trail of the musk-ox herd. 

The herd, though travelling fast, had not gone 



LITTLE BULL OF THE BARRENS 207 

far. On a sudden, as if at a premonition of peril, 
the old bull halted with a loud snort. Neither 
smell nor sound of his enemies had reached him, 
but he took alarm, and gave the signal to form 
phalanx for defence, at the same time galloping 
around the flank of the herd to close up and 
strengthen the rear. The evolution was prompt 
and swift. But before it was quite accomplished, 
up from the white obscurity of the storm, in si- 
lence, came the leaping wolves. 

Straight into the gap in the rear of the herd 
they hurled themselves, slashing on every side 
with the aim of spreading a panic. A young 
bull, just in the act of whirling furiously to con- 
front the attack, was caught full on the flank, and 
went down coughing, his throat torn clean out. 
A young cow, with one wolf snapping at her side, 
but failing to gain a vital spot, and another on her 
back, biting for her neck through the matted 
mane, went mad with terror, and charged straight 
in among the calves at the centre of the herd, 
making a way for the whole pack. 

In a second several of the calves, bawling fran- 
tically, were pulled down. The wolves, mad with 
blood and their late triumph over the man, were 
in a riot of slaughter. The herd was cleft and 
rent asunder to the heart. The victory seemed 
overwhelming. 



208 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

But there was one thing which the pack had 
not reckoned with — the indomitable pluck and 
generalship of the old bull. Blindly confident 
in their leader, the herd hung together stolidly, 
instead of disintegrating. The front ranks turned 
inward upon the bloody convulsion of the centre. 
At the same time the old bull, followed by a 
couple of raging cows in quest of their young 
calves, came plunging in behind the pack and fell 
upon its rear like battering rams. In a moment 
the flanks closed in behind them, and the com- 
pleted circle, instead of flying to pieces, began 
ponderously to constrict. 

As the wolves realized what was happening, 
the two hindermost whirled about, just in time 
to leap savagely at the old bull's neck, one on 
each side. But they had no room to act effec- 
tively, no chance to choose their hold. As he 
charged with head down and the full impetus of 
his bulk, their fangs gashed him to the shoulder, 
but slantingly, so that the wounds were not deep. 
In his rage he never felt them. The next mo- 
ment his two assailants were borne down, gored 
and trampled, by the frantic cows, while he 
lurched onward into the hideous melee at the 
centre. A second more, and the churning, 
snorting mass became wedged almost solid. 
Snapping silently at whatever was in reach, the 



LITTLE BULL OF THE BARRENS 209 

wolves were overborne, trodden down with the 
dead or dying calves. The leader of the pack, 
with two of the more astute of his followers, suc- 
ceeded in dragging himself forth upon the packed 
shoulders of his adversaries, ran over the heaving 
sea of backs, and raced away through the storm, 
gored and streaming. Soon there was no sign 
of a wolf anywhere to be seen. But still the 
packed herd went on with its trampling and 
churning, sullenly resolute to make an end of 
the matter, till even the sturdy unwounded calves 
were in danger of being downed, and the weaker 
ones perished miserably. At last, in some way, 
the old bull managed to make his orders under- 
stood. The milling slackened, the pressure re- 
laxed. Ponderously he shouldered his way out, 
and started off once more toward the northeast. 
Instantly the herd followed, lumbering at his 
heels. A few, badly wounded, limped and stag- 
gered in the rear, and three cows, their eyes rolling 
wildly, remained standing over certain shapeless 
masses that lay trodden into the red snow. For 
some minutes they stood there, mooing disconso- 
lately ; then, one after the other, they shook their 
shaggy heads and galloped away in pursuit of the 
herd, appalled at the solitude and the sight of so 
much deatho 



THE TIGER OF THE SEA 



The Tiger of the Sea 

THROUGH the broad, indolent, green- 
purple swells, ruffled and crisped along their 
tops by a mild breeze, the cow-orca went wallow- 
ing contentedly, her calf swimming close at her 
side. From time to time it rubbed against her, 
as if apprehensive in face of the vast and perilous 
spaces of the ocean, and seeking covert behind her 
short powerful flipper. And from time to time, 
being one of the most devoted and assiduous of 
all the mothers of the wild, she would gather it 
caressingly to her side with that great flipper, or, 
whirling half around, touch it inquiringly with her 
enormous rounded snout. 

She was a good nineteen or twenty feet in length, 
the great orca — or " killer whale," as she would 
have been dubbed by any sailor or fisherman who 
might have chanced to cast eyes upon her. She 
would have been recognized at once, from all the 
other members of her whale-and-porpoise tribe, 
by the immense dorsal fin, not far from five feet 
high, rising erect from the broad and massive 
black curve of her back, by the two conspicuous 

white streaks on her black flank, and by the 

213 



214 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

sharply defined line of her cream-white belly as 
she rolled lazily on the slope of a swell. All 
these were danger signals, which the knowing 
would have taken care to heed. 

Little cause for apprehension had the calf of the 
orca, as long as it kept near its mother. For this 
most swift and savage of all the cetaceans feared 
nothing that swam, except her giant cousin, the 
cachalot or sperm-whale. Though but twenty 
feet long, she would attack and kill, through the 
sheer ferocity of her fury, the great whalebone or 
" right " whale, of fully four times her length and 
many times her bulk. Man she might have feared, 
had she ever learned his power ; but, being poor 
in blubber, her tribe had never tempted man to 
so difficult and perilous a hunting. There were 
sharks, to be sure, that might equal or surpass 
her in size, but none to even approach her in 
savagery, speed, or cunning. It was in care-free 
content, therefore, that she lazed onward through 
the bland, untroubled sea, heedless alike of the 
surf on the yellow cliffs to her right, and of the 
empty spaces of ocean to her left. Such attention 
as she could spare from the baby charms of her 
calf was given to searching the transparent deeps 
below her, where lurked the big squid and slug- 
gish, bottom-feeding fish on which she habitually 
preyed. 



THE TIGER OF THE SEA 215 

Suddenly, with no sound but a vast sucking 
gurgle as the waters closed above her, she dived. 
Far down in the obscurity she had caught sight 
of a pallid, sprawling form. It was an octopus, 
which had been so ill-advised as to leave its cus- 
tomary home among the rocks of the bottom and 
seek new feeding-grounds. Before it had time 
even to attempt escape, the great jaws of the 
" killer " engulfed it. For one moment its eight 
long tentacles writhed desperately, clutching at its 
captor's lips. Then they vanished, sucked in and 
swallowed at a gulp. Thereupon the orca sailed 
leisurely back to the sunlit surface, met on her 
way up by her anxious calf, which had not been 
quite quick enough to follow its mother's lightning 
descent. She had not been two minutes absent, 
and never for an instant out of sight, but the 
youngster's instinct warned it well that the mild 
blue element in which it dwelt was full of dangers. 

The octopus, though a large one, had been but 
a mouthful for the great killer, a stimulus, merely, 
to her vast appetite. She journeyed now with a 
keener eye upon the depths. Presently the deep 
blue-green of the water began to change to a 
lighter, beryl hue, where a line of making reef came 
up to within some thirty feet of the surface, and 
caught the sun. Here, basking, lay a broad, flat, 
bat-like creature, with wing-fins a dozen feet 



2l6 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

across, and a long whip-like tail. Its cold move- 
less eyes, staring upward, caught sight of the 
killer's body, slowly cleaving the surface. With 
an almost imperceptible movement of the black 
wings, it slid from the reef and plunged for refuge 
in the depths. 

But the giant ray had not been quick or stealthy 
enough to evade its enemy's eye. Again the orca 
dived, this time without heed of silence, and so 
swiftly that her broad flukes, rising straight into 
the air, came down upon the water with a report 
that resounded all the way in to shore. Her 
descent was straight as a plummet. The ray, 
seeing it, was seized with panic. It darted to one 
side, and shot upward again, at a terrific pace, on 
a magnificent sweeping curve. With the force of 
that uprush it hurled its whole black, shuddering 
bulk clear into the air, where it turned, and for 
one instant hung flapping darkly, as if the very 
madness of its terror had driven it to the conquest 
of a new element. To the nervous calf it was a 
prodigy of horror, blotting out the sun. But 
this violent excursion into the air was of only a 
second or two's duration, and futile as it was 
brief. As the flat black wings came down again, 
with an enormous splash, the pursuing orca arose 
almost beneath them, seized them, and dragged 
them under. There was no fight, the ray being 



THE TIGER OF THE SEA 217 

powerless against its mighty adversary — only a 
moment's blind, frantic struggle in the foaming 
swirls, and then a spreading stain of red on the 
green sea. 

This, now, was a fully sufficing meal, even for 
such an appetite as the orca's; and many neglected 
fragments of it went spreading and sinking away 
to feed the innumerable scavenging crabs that 
lurked in the weeds and hollows of the sunken 
reef. The orca, for the next half hour or so, 
remained where she was, rolling contentedly in 
the bright water above the reef, nursing and 
caressing her calf, and digesting her meal. Then 
she slowly continued her journey, but slanting in 
toward shore till she was not more than half a 
mile from the chain of precipitous islets and 
broken promontories which fringed this dangerous 
coast. 

It was now full noon, and the unclouded sun- 
light, striking almost straight downward upon the 
surface of the sea, revealed the bottom at an 
amazing depth. Poised about half-way down 
the glimmering transparency, a large squid, or 
cuttle-fish, was swimming at leisure. His narrow, 
tapering body was about six feet in length, and 
perhaps twelve or fourteen inches in diameter at 
the broadest part, which was the head. From 
this formless head, seeming to sprout from it as 



218 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

leaf-stalks from a carrot, grew a bunch of tentacles, 
ten in number, and of about the same length as 
the body. Body and tentacles alike were of a 
pallid, dirty yellow-gray, with brownish spots — a 
color that made its wearer almost invisible in 
that sun-penetrated sea. The progress of the 
squid was backward ; and he achieved it, not by 
moving his tentacles, but by sucking a volume of 
water into a great muscular sac beneath the tentacles 
and forcibly expelling it again. It looked as if 
he were breathing water and using it to blow him- 
self along. 

The orca was by no means hungry so soon 
after the feast which she had made on the giant 
ray, but the succulent morsel of the squid was a 
temptation not to be resisted. Tipping smoothly, 
her huge but finely modelled black-and-white 
form shot straight downward through the shim- 
mering flood. But before she could reach him, 
the squid looked up and saw her. On the instant 
his ten loose tentacles tightened to a rigid bundle 
which offered no obstruction to his progress; his 
pale sides contracted with a mighty convulsion, 
expelling a volume of water which shot him along 
with the speed of a torpedo from its tube ; and at 
the same time, from a gland within the propulsion 
sac, he squirted forth a jet of inky fluid which 
spread at once into a great cloud of black, veiling 



THE TIGER OF THE SEA 



219 



his flight. Behind that concealment he changed 
his direction, and fled downward toward a deep 
crevice in the rocky bottom, where he knew that 
the jaws of his enemy would not be able to reach 
him. 

The orca, undeterred, plunged straight onward 
into the inky cloud. But once well within that 
gloom she lost all track of her intended prey. 
She also, for the moment, lost herself. This 
way and that she darted, snapping her vast jaws 
ravenously, but in vain. They closed on nothing 
but the empty and tainted water. At last, and 
quite unexpectedly, she emerged from the black- 
ness into the transparent green, and, glancing up- 
ward, saw a sight which caused her to hurl herself 
madly to the surface with a Titanic sweep of her 
great flanks. That furious stroke made the depths 
boil like the thrust of a liner's propellers. 

The calf, having started to follow its mother 
into the depths, had been frightened by that inky 
cloud into which it had seen her vanish. Return- 
ing in a flurry to the surface, it was swimming 
around aimlessly and anxiously, when it caught 
the eye of a wandering shark. 

The shark, knowing very well what it was, 
looked around for the mother. He had no 
desire to be uncivil to a mother orca; but there 
was no mother in sight. He did not understand 



220 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

it ; but he was ragingly hungry, and such an 
opportunity was quite irresistible. He rose at the 
calf with a rush, and turned over on his side, 
exposing his livid-white belly, to seize the prize. 
The calf, appalled at the black, triangular, many- 
toothed cavern which gaped so suddenly before 
it, writhed away just in time, and began swim- 
ming in a big circle around the spot where its 
mother had dived. 

Again the shark rushed; but he had to turn on 
his side to bring his curious underset jaws into 
play, and the calf of the orca had already the 
nimbleness of its tribe. Again the attack failed. 
Before he could repeat it, he caught sight of the 
mother shooting up from the green depths. 
Though he was some twenty-five feet in length — 
a good five feet longer than the orca — he turned 
and fled for his life. 

One glance assured the mother that her little 
one was unhurt. Then she darted after the 
aggressor at a pace which made his flight quite 
futile. He had not gone fifty yards when she 
was upon him, open-jawed. Hurling himself 
convulsively aside, he just succeeded in evading 
that first resistless charge. With the courage 
of desperation he twisted himself about, turned 
half over, glided beneath his adversary's belly, 
and caught at her with his triangular jaws. But 



THE TIGER OF THE SEA 221 

she had already swerved, and he failed to get a 
fair hold. He did, indeed, rend out a mass of 
hide and blubber, but he reached no vital point, 
and the raging killer hardly felt the wound. 
Whirling with a violence that sent the foam and 
spray spurting into the air, she caught the base 
of the shark's tail between her immense jaws. 

As far as anything like a fight was concerned, 
this was the end of it. For several minutes 
the gigantic struggle went on, dashing the dis- 
colored water yards high ; but it was all on 
one side, as the orca shook and crushed and 
tore the life out of her beaten opponent. At 
last she drew off, leaving a mangled mass to 
sink slowly into the depths. Then, having 
snuggled the excited calf under her fin, and 
given him to nurse, she swam slowly inland 
toward the deep channel which here ran between 
the islands and the shore, where she thought 
she might find some more of those succulent 
squid to compensate her for the one which had 
so inconsiderately evaded her approaches. 

The breeze, which hitherto had been little but 
a succession of cat's-paws, now settled into a 
steady draft, though not strong enough to 
do more than darken the surface of the sea to 
a heavy purple. Running free before it, up 
along the coast, between the cliffs and the islands, 



22 2 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

came a small cat-boat, its one sail sparkling 
white in the clear sunshine. 

The tiny craft contained two passengers — 
the man at the helm, smoking a big brier pipe, 
and a silky brown retriever curled up at the 
foot of the mast. It was a stern coast and a 
dangerous water for such a cockle-shell to trav- 
erse ; but the man was a good amateur navigator 
of small craft, and he knew that, between the 
port which he had left, some fifteen miles back 
down the coast, and the harbor which he was 
making for, a dozen miles to the north, there 
were plenty of refuges wherein he could take 
shelter in case a sudden storm should blow up 
out of the east. These waters were unfamiliar 
to him, but he had a good chart ; and this was 
his special delight — the coasting of unknown 
shores, with no companionship but that of his 
faithful and accommodating dog, who always 
agreed with him as to the most interesting places 
to visit. 

But though Gardner was an expert yachts- 
man, with an eye wise to all signs of the weather, 
and an instinct that could feel the pulse of the 
wind through tiller or taut sheet, he knew some- 
thing less of natural history than was desirable 
for one who made his playground on the peopled 
seas. His notions of all the whale tribe and their 



THE TIGER OF THE SEA 223 

varying characters were based on what he had 
read of the great timorous whalebone whale, 
and what he had seen of the merry and harmless 
porpoise. When, therefore, he caught sight of 
the arched black back and formidable head of 
the orca, lazily ploughing the swells, it never 
occurred to him that now was the time for discre- 
tion. Had he been an habitue of these waters, 
he would have turned his prow promptly in 
another direction, lest the orca should think he 
wanted to intrude upon her privacy. As it was, 
however, he sailed nearer, to see what manner 
of fish or beast it might be, this black-and-white 
creature that treated his approach with such 
indifference. 

Passing at a distance of eighty or a hundred 
yards, Gardner was seized with a fool idea. This 
was a good chance for a shot. The unknown 
beast would form an interesting trophy. He 
did not stop to consider what he should do with 
it if he bagged it. He did not stop to consider 
that with his light rifle he could not hope to do 
more than inflict a painful wound through the 
layers of blubber which would protect the vitals 
of this sea-monster. He did not know, either, 
that a dead whale sinks to the bottom, and 
that therefore the most successful shot could 
bring him no reward. It was enough that the 



224 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

instinct to kill something was upon him. He 
flung a knee over the tiller to keep his course 
steady, snatched up the rifle, and fired at a 
spot just behind the orca's big flipper — some- 
where about where he judged the heart would 
lie. As he did so, the dog, realizing that there 
was some excitement afoot, sprang up, put his 
forepaws on the gunwale, and barked furiously at 
the strange black shape there rolling in the swell. 
To Gardner's astonishment, the monster itself 
made no immediate response to the shot, but 
instantly, just under its flank, there began a wild 
commotion. Something there fell to threshing 
the water frantically, and the monster, swinging 
about, gazed at that something with great and 
anxious concern. She stroked it with her flipper, 
as if trying to calm it ; and then Gardner saw 
that it was the young of the monster that he had 
struck. At this he felt full of remorse. Had he 
seen the calf, he would not have fired at either 
parent or little one. He was not wantonly cruel, 
but only thoughtless. For a few seconds he 
stared irresolutely. Then, judging from its 
actions that the calf had received a mortal wound, 
he decided that he ought to put it out of its 
misery. Taking very careful aim, he fired again. 
The report echoed sharply from the cliff-face 
of an island not a hundred feet away. 



THE TIGER OF THE SEA 225 

Gardner had made a good shot this time. 
Before the echoes of the report had died out, 
the calf lay still, and then very slowly be- 
gan to sink. There was stillness for a few 
seconds, broken only by the excited barking 
of the brown retriever. The orca swam slowly 
half around the body of her young, and appar- 
ently assured herself that it was dead. Then 
she turned her small eyes upon the boat. It 
was only for an instant, but in that instant 
Gardner realized that he had made a hideous 
mistake. Instinctively he headed the boat for 
the rocky islet. 

As he jammed the tiller over, at the same 
time hurriedly freeing his sheet, he saw the 
water boil about the orca's black form. She 
was a good hundred feet away, but so appalling 
was her rush that she seemed to be upon him in 
the same instant. With a yelp the dog sprang 
far up into the bow. As the boat was at 
that moment broadside on to the terrific attack, 
Gardner kept his seat, and fired another des- 
perate shot full in the face of the oncoming 
doom. He might as well have fired a pea- 
shooter. 

The gun dropped to his feet. In the same 
moment it was as if an express train had 
struck the boat. She was lifted bodily from the 



226 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

water, and all one side crushed in, while Gard- 
ner felt himself hurled clean over the boom. 
As he came down, he heard a yelp from the 
brown retriever. 

In order to escape entanglement in the sail, 
which slapped sousing over on top of him, 
Gardner dived, and came up some fifteen feet 
beyond. To this dive, and to the momentary 
concealment afforded by the sail, he doubtless 
owed his life. He was a crack swimmer, and 
instantly started for the island at sprinting 
speed, doing the cc crawl " stroke, with head 
most of the time under water. The orca at 
first did not observe his escape. The unhappy 
dog, by his barking, had caught her eye, and 
him she had seized and crushed the instant 
he was thrown into the water. Then, turning 
her fury upon the wreck of the boat, she 
had torn it and smashed it to kindling-wood, 
seizing it in her huge jaws and shaking it as 
a terrier shakes a rat. This done, she had 
turned toward the island, and her deadly eyes 
had fallen upon the form of the swimming 
man as he cleft his way shoreward. 

Her rush was like the rush of a torpedo ; 
but Gardner was already laying his frantic 
hands upon the ledge. The ledge — a shelf 
not a dozen inches in width — was just awash. 



THE TIGER OF THE SEA 227 

He felt that it was no refuge. But at about 
his own height above him was a niche in the 
rock, whimsically gouged out as if to hold a 
statue. With desperate agility he drew himself 
up into the tiny retreat, whipping up his legs 
behind him, and shrinking as flat as possible 
into the niche. At the same moment he was 
deluged with foam and spray, as with a dull 
crash the body of his pursuer struck the rock 
just below his feet. 

Gardner shuddered, and struggled gaspingly 
to catch back his breath into his laboring 
lungs. He had swum many races, but never 
one like that. Turning, cautiously, and keeping 
himself still flattened like a limpet to the back 
of the niche, he stared down, trembling lest 
the avenger should essay another such mad 
leap, and with better effect. 

But the orca did not seem disposed to try 
it again. The shock of her impact had been 
terrific, and must have more or less driven 
the breath from her body. She was now 
swimming slowly to and fro before the rock, 
a grim and dreadful jailer. Gardner looked 
down into her cold little eyes, and shivered at 
the intelligent and implacable hate that flamed 
in them. 

When he found himself sufficiently recovered 



228 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

to consider his situation, he was forced to acknowl- 
edge it a rather desperate one. Reaching out- 
ward and upward as far as he could, his hands 
found no protuberance of the rock by the aid of 
which he might hope to climb out of his niche 
and so make his way to the top of the cliff. He 
had no way of judging how long his vengeful 
jailer might remain on duty ; but from the mag- 
nitude of the wrong he had done her, the business- 
like method of her patrol, and the effective fury 
which she had shown in her attack, he had little 
reason to hope that she would soon tire of her 
office. In those teeming seas, as he knew, she 
could find plenty to eat without forsaking her 
post. But if those seas were teeming with sea- 
life, he reflected ruefully that they were at the 
same time rather barren of ships. The coasting 
schooners were apt to give that part of the coast 
a wide berth, owing to its sunken reefs and awk- 
ward currents. His island, to be sure, was little 
more than half a mile from shore — an easy 
enough swim for him under ordinary circum- 
stances. But, even with his jailer out of the 
way, he had no relish for running the gantlet of 
the giant sharks which haunted the island channels. 
Exposed as he was to the full glare of the sun — 
the rock around him was uncomfortably hot be- 
neath his hands, — he wondered how long it would 



THE TIGER OF THE SEA 229 

be before heat and thirst would so overcome him 
that his legs would crumple under his weight, and 
he would topple forward into the jaws of his wait- 
ing foe. On this point, however, he was presently 
somewhat reassured, as he noted that the sun 
would very soon pass over the shoulder of the 
cliff and leave him in the shade. As far as the 
heat was concerned, he would be fairly secure 
until the next morning. But then, if the weather 
should continue fine, how would he endure the 
long intolerable blaze of the forenoon, before the 
sun should again go over the cliff? He began 
to pray for storm and shrouded skies. But here 
he stopped himself, realizing his dilemma. If 
storm should come, it was likely at that season 
to come out of the southeast ; and in such event 
the first rising seas v/ould lick him from his perch. 
He decided hastily that it was best to make his 
prayer a general one, and hazard no dangerous 
suggestions to Providence. 

Fumbling instinctively in his pocket, he drew 
forth his soaked and sopping tobacco-pouch and a 
box of wet matches. The latter included some 
wax vestas, and he had a dim hope that these, if 
carefully dried and properly coaxed, might perhaps 
be induced to light. He spread them out, with 
the tobacco, on the hot rock between his feet. 
He had lost his pipe in the catastrophe, but he 



230 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

had letters in his pocket, and with these, when 
dried, he planned to roll cigarettes. The enter- 
prise gave him something to do, helping him to 
pass the weary afternoon. But in the end he 
found that none of the matches would afford him 
so much as a sputter. Angrily he threw their 
futile remnants into the sea. 

Night fell suddenly, as always in those latitudes, 
and the moonlight enchanted the long swells to 
the smoothness of glass. All night the orca 
swam backward and forward before the rock, 
till the changeless monotony of her movements 
began to hypnotize her prisoner, and he turned 
his eyes to the cliff-face to escape its influence. 
He was in deadly fear of dropping to sleep in his 
weariness, and falling out of the niche. His legs 
were giving way beneath him, and there was not 
room in the niche for him to sit down, or even to 
crouch with any comfort. At last, in desperation, 
he decided to take the risk of letting his legs 
hang over the edge, where his enemy could reach 
them if she should dare another of her wild leaps 
into the air. The moment he seated himself in 
this position she swam nearer and eyed him with 
unutterable malignancy. But she did not attempt 
to repeat her flying rush. It was plain to 
Gardner that she had no relish for such another 
violent concussion with the rock. 



THE TIGER OF THE SEA 23 1 

At last the interminable night wore itself away. 
The moon had long disappeared over the cliff, 
when the velvet purple of the sky began to thin 
and chill, the stars to pale and fade. Then the 
measureless splendor of an unclouded tropic 
dawn broke over the sea, and the shining plane 
of the waters seemed to tilt downward to meet the 
sun. Gardner gathered all his weary strength to 
face the fiery ordeal that he felt to be before 
him. 

The better to fortify himself against it, he took 
off his light coat, and, by the aid of some pieces 
of cord which he found in his pockets, he lowered 
the garment and drenched it well in the sea. The 
orca darted in to see what he was doing, but he 
drew up the dripping coat before she could seize 
it. He felt that this idea was nothing less than 
an inspiration, for, by keeping his head and body 
well drenched, he would be able to endure almost 
any heat, and might at the same time, by absorp- 
tion, hope to ward off for a time the extreme 
torments of his thirst. 

As the relenting Fates decreed, however, his 
trial was presently to be ended. Along'about nine 
o'clock in the morning, from somewhere behind 
the island came throbbing on the still air a harsh, 
staccato chug — chug — chug — chug, which was to 
Gardner's ears the divinest of melodies. In an 



232 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

instant he had stripped his light shirt over his 
head and was holding it in eager hands. A 
moment more, and a powerful forty-foot motor- 
launch came into view. She was about a hundred 
and fifty yards away, and making a lot of racket. 
But Gardner, yelling wildly and flapping his 
shirt in the air, succeeded in catching her atten- 
tion. She turned in toward the rock ; but in the 
next instant the noise of the motor stopped, and 
she swerved off again. The pilot had caught 
sight of Gardner's jailer. 

There were three men in the launch. One of 
them hailed the prisoner. 

" What's up ? " he demanded concisely. 

" I shot that brute's calf yesterday," answered 
Gardner, " and she smashed up my boat and 
chased me up here on to this rock." 

There was silence for a moment on the launch. 
Then the captain answered. 

" Any fellow that's looking for trouble can 
generally find it by starting in to fool with a 
c killer,' " said he. 

" I've thought since that I had made a 
mistake," said Gardner dryly. " But that was 
yesterday morning, and I'm pretty near all in. 
Come and take me off"." 

There was a brief consultation on the launch. 
The orca, meanwhile, continued her patrol before 



THE TIGER OF THE SEA 233 

the rock, as if such things as forty-foot motor- 
boats were not worth noticing. 

" You'll have to hang on a bit longer," shouted 
the captain, " while we run back to port and get 
a whale gun. We've got a heavy rifle here, but 
it's not safe to tackle her with that, for, if we 
didn't fix her first shot, she'd make matchwood 
of this launch in about ten seconds. We'll be 
back inside of an hour, so don't fret." 

" Thanks ! " said Gardner ; and, sweeping off 
in a wide curve, the launch disappeared behind 
the island. 

It seemed to the imprisoned man a terribly 
long hour, and he had occasion to bless the 
cool dripping jacket before he again heard the 
chug — chug — chug — chug of the motor clamor- 
ing behind his prison. This time, as soon as it 
came in sight, it bore straight down upon the 
orca. In its bow, as it slid gracefully dipping 
over the smooth swell, Gardner remarked a 
strange gun, a sort of short big-bore rifle on a 
swivel. The orca now took note of the fact 
that the launch was heading straight for her. 
She paused in her tireless patrolling, and eyed it 
defiantly, hesitating as to whether she should 
attack it or not. 

The launch reversed propellers till her progress 
came to a stop, while her captain sighted the 



234 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

weapon in her bow. There was a mighty report. 
The monster flung herself half-way out of the 
water, and fell back with a gigantic splash. For 
a moment she rushed madly around in a half 
circle, then crashed headlong into the cliff, gave 
one violent shudder, and slowly sank to a fringing 
reef about two fathoms down. 

" Have you plenty of water right up to your 
ledge ? " demanded the captain, as the launch 
drew slowly in. 

" Plenty," said Gardner, swinging down 
stiffly from his niche and standing ready to crawl 
aboard. 



GRAY LYNX'S LAST HUNTING 



Gray Lynx's Last Hunting 

GRAY LYNX went ahead. His mate, al- 
most as large as he, and even more savage 
in her lightning ferocity, was at the same time 
more shy of approaching the habitations of man. 
Full of suspicions, but driven by the pangs of 
midwinter famine, she followed at a little distance, 
while Gray Lynx, stealthily, crouching close to 
the snow, led the way across the open to the low, 
snow-muffled outbuildings of the lonely wilder- 
ness farm. 

He was a strange, sinister figure, this great 
Canadian lynx, a kind of gigantic, rough-haired 
cat with the big, broad, disproportionate pads of 
a half-grown Newfoundland pup, and hind legs 
and haunches grotesquely over-developed as if in 
imitation of a jack-rabbit. His moon face, stiffly- 
whiskered, and with a sort of turned-back ruff 
beneath the blunt, strong jaws, was indescribably 
wild and savage, lit as it was by a pair of round, 
unwinking, palely luminous eyes, and surrounded 
by sharp ears fantastically tufted. In color he 
was all of a shadowy, light gray, faintly toned on 
back and flanks with a brownish yellow. His 

237 



238 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

grotesque but extraordinarily powerful hind- 
quarters were finished off with a straight stub of 
a tail, perhaps three inches or four in length, He 
might, in fact, have looked like a caricature, but 
for the appearance of power and speed and deadly 
efficiency which he conveyed, the suggestion of 
menace in every movement. 

Under the necessity of the Hungry Month, 
the big lynx had visited this clearing once before, 
prowling as near as he dared, in the first shadows 
of late afternoon. He had seen in the yard a 
couple of cows — which were too big to interest 
him. What was more to his purpose, he had 
seen some huddling sheep. Then a draft of 
icy air blowing from the direction of the house 
had borne to his nostrils the dreaded scent of 
man, and he had slunk oflf hurriedly to his coverts. 
But those sheep ! The smell of them, the re- 
membered relish of a lamb which he had once de- 
voured in the thickets, stung his appetite to mad- 
ness. Like most of the wild creatures, he had 
learned, either from instinct or experience, that 
man was less to be dreaded by night than by day. 
So, well after nightfall, he had returned to the 
farm, bringing his ravenous mate with him. 

At one side of the yard, startlingly bright in 
the light of the low moon, stood the settler's 
house ; at the other side, two low, connected 



GRAY LYNX'S LAST HUNTING 239 

barns, with a shed running half-way to the house. 
The long, black shadows of the buildings stretched 
nearly across the open space, between the farm- 
stead and the woods. The snow was hard packed 
and frozen, covered with an inch of recent and 
lighter snowfall, which the winds would presently 
come and sweep away into the fence-corners. 
Through the space of shadow Gray Lynx crept 
like a denser shadow, till he reached the corner of 
the nearest barn. Here he crouched, making 
himself as small as possible, while he took a long 
sniff at one of the cracks in the warped, ill-seasoned, 
hemlock boarding. Then he turned his head and 
looked at his mate, who was crouching some ten 
paces to the rear. As if this was a signal that all 
was as it should be, she ran lightly forward and 
crouched again beside him. 

From within, besides that warm, distracting, 
woolly smell, came comfortable rustlings of dry 
hay, and sounds of chewing, and safe contented 
breathings. It was obvious that the sheep were 
in there. Gray Lynx's eyes, piercing and impa- 
tient, searched the blank wall before him. There 
was no entrance from that side. Furtively he led 
the way round the corner, his mate still keeping 
a prudent distance. At the edge of the moonlit 
yard he hesitated. Still there was no opening. 
Keeping carefully in the shadow, he prowled 



240 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

around to the other corner of the building, but 
with no better luck. Then, growing more bold, 
he ventured into the light and crept down the 
front of the barn, flattening himself to the snow 
as he went; his mate, distrustful still, and now 
growing angry as she began to feel that she had 
been fooled, peered around the corner and 
watched him. 

Gray Lynx was furious. He had expected to 
see those sheep still huddled in the yard. Finding 
that they were inside the barn, he then expected 
to get in among them by the same way they 
themselves had entered. Where such fools as 
sheep could, surely he could go. He knew noth- 
ing of doors that closed and opened, so he was 
puzzled. He drew back and stared up at the 
roof. Assuredly, the sheep must have got in by 
way of the roof. He could see no opening up 
there, however, so he went prowling around the 
other barn and the shed as well, finding every- 
thing shut up tightly against the biting cold. 
Then he came again to his mate, who was now 
awaiting him, tail and whiskers twitching with ill- 
humor, in the shadow behind the first barn. 

But Gray Lynx was not yet ready to acknowl- 
edge defeat. The roof of the shed was lower 
than that of the barns. With a tremendous leap 
he gained it, but only to fall back ignominiously 



GRAY LYNX'S LAST HUNTING 241 

beneath a mass of snow which his claws had dis- 
engaged. At the next attempt, however, he got 
a grip with his front paws upon the roof itself, 
and so drew himself up, but not without a sharp 
noise of scraping and clawing. The sudden 
sound disturbed the hens, roosting inside immedi- 
ately below the roof, and they set up a shrill 
cackling of alarm. 

Gray Lynx stopped, held himself rigid, and 
listened with all his ears. Chickens would do him 
almost as well as sheep — if only he could come 
at them ! He clawed savagely at the roof, but 
it was new and strong, and he speedily found that 
there was nothing to be hoped for by that method 
of procedure. Frantic with baffled eagerness, he 
ran along the shed and sprang with a magnificent 
bound to the roof of the barn. At the thud of 
his landing the cattle stirred and snorted uneasily, 
and the two horses whinnied with anxious inter- 
rogation. 

At this instant a window in the farmhouse flew 
up with a clatter. Gray Lynx turned his flat, 
cruel face sharply toward the sound. He saw a 
jet of flame spurt from the window ; a crashing 
thunder shocked his ears, and something hummed 
viciously close above his head. Fortunately for 
him, the light of the moon is a deceptive light to 
shoot by. He left no chance, however, for the 



242 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

settler to try a second shot. With one wild leap 
he cleared the roof and alighted on the snow be- 
hind the barn. He saw his mate already fleeing, 
and he followed in long, panic-stricken bounds. 

Well within the shelter of the woods, Gray 
Lynx found his mate awaiting him. She stood 
with her head turned back over her shoulder, 
eying him dangerously. What she conveyed to 
him by that look is not with any certainty to be 
recorded ; but it seemed to be unpleasant in its 
drift, for Gray Lynx turned aside, in a casual way, 
and pretended to sniff interestedly at the day-old 
trail of a rabbit. It was difficult, however, to as- 
sume an interest for any length of time in any- 
thing so hopelessly uninteresting. After a few 
seconds he wandered off stealthily, in search of 
some fresher trail. His mate, though hot with 
scorn and disappointment, ranged along within a 
few leaps of him. In such a famine season it was 
to the interest of both that they should hunt to- 
gether, so far as their morose and distrustful 
natures made it possible. 

The stillness of death itself lay on the forest. 
The very air seemed brittle under the intense 
cold. The glare of the unclouded moon was 
glassy, hard, implacable. It seemed to devitalize 
even the strong, stealthy forms of the gliding 
lynxes, to change them into a pair of drifting 



GRAY LYNX'S LAST HUNTING 243 

ghosts, which turned their heads from side to side 
as they went, and flashed from their eyes a pale, 
blasting fire. 

But Gray Lynx had a very unghostly hunger 
— as had also his mate. Suddenly his unerring 
eyes detected, under a spreading hemlock, a spot 
where the snow had been disturbed. To a less 
keen vision it would have been nothing, but to 
Gray Lynx it was a clear, unmistakable indication. 
Swerving sharply from his trail, he pounced upon 
the little roughness in the snow, and began dig- 
ging furiously with his forepaws. In a moment 
he was half buried, for the snow, here in the 
shelter of the trees, lay softer than in the wind- 
beaten fields. Sniffing his way by his well-in- 
structed nose, he followed a deep trail which led 
in toward the trunk of the hemlock. His mate, 
meanwhile, drew near and watched enviously. A 
moment more and his head emerged amid a swirl 
of fluttering wings and flying snow. In his jaws 
he held a big cock-grouse. The unhappy bird 
had buried himself in the snow for the night, that 
he might sleep more warmly than on his roost 
among the branches. For a second more his 
strong wings flapped spasmodically, then Gray 
Lynx crunched the life out of him and fell to his 
meal. 

The ill-humored female crept nearer, crouch- 



244 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

ing with a conciliatory air. But Gray Lynx 
was not of a gallant or chivalrous tribe, and a 
single cock-grouse is not half a meal for a starv- 
ing lynx. With a strident snarl he thrust out 
one great paw in warning. The female stopped, 
licked her lips hungrily, then turned like lightning 
and ran up a neighboring fir-tree. Her ears had 
caught the sound of a startled twitter which had 
answered Gray Lynx's snarl. There were snow- 
buntings resting in that tree. Her iron claws, 
however, clutching at the bark, announced her 
coming, and for all her speed the birds escaped 
her, hopping up with terrified outcry to the top- 
most slender branches, where she could not go. 
Smarting with disappointment, she descended the 
tree, and continued her prowl at a distance of 
some twenty paces from her selfish partner, who 
had by this time finished up the grouse. 

For perhaps half an hour nothing more hap- 
pened, and the temper of Gray Lynx's mate grew 
momently more dangerous. It was bad enough 
to be so hungry as she was, but to be first led into 
a trap by Gray Lynx and then to see him make 
a meal before her eyes, this was hardly to be 
borne. All at once she gave a great leap to one 
side, turning in the air as she sprang, and came 
down, with forepaws outstretched and claws w 7 ide 
spread, just at the edge of a snow-draped bush. 



GRAY LYNX'S LAST HUNTING 245 

Out of the corner of her eye she had seen a wood- 
mouse. With her miraculous speed of action, as 
of a mighty spring unloosed, she had caught the 
tiny victim just as it was vanishing under the ref- 
uge. It made but one mouthful, to be sure, but 
it was quite as good as a snow-bunting would have 
been. She licked her chops, gave Gray Lynx a 
sidelong look, and crept on. 

Slowly the moon rolled up the vitreous sky, 
shortening the shadows of tree and stump. The 
forest was more open here, having been recently 
gone over by the lumbermen. Dense thickets, 
single trees, ranks of stumps, aisles and colon- 
nades of tall second growth, not yet quite heavy 
enough for the woodsman's axe, succeeded each 
other in bewildering confusion. By and by, from 
a hemlock stump just ahead but hidden by some 
bushes, came a crisp sound of gnawing. Both 
lynxes crouched flat, their absurd tails twitching. 
Then, separating so that one should go to each 
side of the clump of bushes, they crept upon the 
heedless gnawer. As they came in sight of him, 
they stopped. It was a big porcupine, fat, warmly 
clad, and indifferent alike to foe and frost. 

Full well the lynxes knew that this was no 
quarry for their hunting. But they could not 
help dallying with the temptation. They stole 
nearer, their mouths watering. The porcupine 



246 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

went on gnawing the dry hemlock ; but when the 
lynxes were come within a few feet of him, he 
stopped, put his nose between his forepaws, and 
erected his needle-pointed quills, till there was 
nothing of him to be seen but this threatening 
array. The lynxes crouched flat, and eyed him 
longingly. At last the female, her hunger get- 
ting the better of her discretion, stole closer and 
reached out a prying nose, as if hoping to find 
some weak point in the scornful rodent's defences. 
Gray Lynx snarled a warning ; but in that same 
instant the porcupine's tail — a massive member 
covered with tiniest needles — jerked sharply and 
just brushed the intruding muzzle. With a spit- 
ting yowl, the lynx jumped backward, two or 
three slender quills sticking in her nose like pins 
in a cushion. Paw and rub and wallow as she 
might, she could not get them out, for their barbed 
edges held inexorably. All she could do was 
break them, and go on, with the points rankling 
like wasp-stings in her tender muzzle. From time 
to time she would plunge her face in the snow, to 
allay the torment. And her temper was by no 
means improved. 

All this, however, troubled Gray Lynx not at 
all. To be sure, the mishap to his mate had 
cooled his longing for porcupine meat, and he 
had resumed his quest of safe hunting. But con- 



GRAY LYNX'S LAST HUNTING 



247 



cern for the female's sufferings never entered into 
his savage heart. She was of importance to him 
only if they should find some big game — a 
strayed sheep or a doe, for instance — which they 
could bring down more surely and more quickly 
by acting in combination. There was none of 
that close and firm intimacy which so often ap- 
pears to exist between the male and female wolf. 

In traversing an alley of big spruce stumps, 
the two came close together, though they con- 
tinued to pay each other not the slightest atten- 
tion. A light, dull pad-pad struck their ears, and 
both crouched flat. In the next instant a white 
rabbit shot past them, almost brushing their noses. 
His great, simple eyes starting from his head with 
terror, he went by at such a pace that there was 
no time to strike him down, though the female, 
who was the farthest from him, made a futile 
swipe at him with one paw. It was clear that 
something deadly must be following the rabbit, 
to cause him such blind panic. Whatever it 
might be, the lynxes had no fear of it. They 
wanted it. And they waited for it. 

And the next moment it came. 

It came running soundlessly, nose up on the 
hot scent, a slim, low, long-bodied, sinuous white 
beast, with a sharp-pointed head and eyes like two 
drops of liquid fire. As it shot past him, Gray 



248 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

Lynx made a stroke at it and missed. But in 
the next fraction of a second the female had 
pounced. She caught the weasel, with both paws, 
in mid-leap. Indomitable, it writhed up and 
fixed its long, fine teeth in her nose. Then her 
fangs closed about its slender loins, and the fierce 
life was crunched out of it. With the blood stream- 
ing from her nose — which eased, however, for 
a moment the galling ache of the porcupine barbs 
— she fell to her meat, growling harshly over it. 
Gray Lynx, perhaps persuading himself that he 
had helped at the hunting of this quarry, de- 
manded a share, and seized one of the weasel's 
hind legs in his teeth. But with a snarl the 
female struck at him, clawing viciously the side 
of his head. He was in no anxiety to force mat- 
ters with so redoubtable an adversary, so, spitting 
indignantly, he drew off and sat down on his 
haunches to watch the feast. 

The feast was brief. For, though the weasel 
was a fairly large one, it was by no means so large 
as the lynx's hunger. Still, when she had finished, 
and passed her great paw over her face and licked 
her chest clean of blood, she might have felt fairly 
comfortable but for that inexorable anguish in her 
nose. 

Not long after this another rabbit bounded 
forth from a thicket just ahead, and darted straight 



GRAY LYNX'S LAST HUNTING 249 

between them. Both sprang at it, simultaneously, 
but each balked the other ; and the rabbit, 
stretched out into a tense, white line of flying fur, 
shot unscathed from under their claws. Gray 
Lynx, as it chanced, had been the nearest to the 
quarry. Choosing to think that he would have 
made a kill had his mate's interference not 
thwarted him, he gave vent to his wrath in a 
buffet, which caught her on the flank and sent her 
rolling over on the snow. Recovering herself, 
she faced him for a moment or two with eyes 
that flamed green, half minded to fly at his throat. 
Then, thinking better of it, she turned away and 
fell to nosing a mouse trail. 

The trail was none too fresh, but neither was it 
hopelessly stale. She chose to follow it. There- 
upon Gray Lynx, hopeful of something worth 
while, stole nearer to see what she might be 
trailing. 

Now, it chanced that in this particular neigh- 
borhood a trapper had been busy. A morsel of 
frozen fish lay upon the snow. Both prowlers 
saw it at the same time, and pounced for it. But 
it was Gray Lynx who reached it first, and he 
bolted it in one mouthful, while his mate snarled 
with rage. Sniffing about for other possible frag- 
ments, he stepped to one side. There was a 
muffled click beneath the surface of the snow. 



2 SO NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

Straightway Gray Lynx, doubling himself like a 
full-drawn bow, and ripping out a screech of panic, 
sprang into the air, with a steel trap hanging to 
his left forepaw. 

The trap was attached by a chain to a solid 
wooden balk, too heavy for Gray Lynx to drag. 
Biting savagely at the strange horror which had 
clutched him, yowling and spitting, and rolling 
head over heels, he lost his wits entirely in the 
madness of his efforts to escape. For a moment 
the female shrank back, with flattened ears and 
narrowed eyes, frightened and bewildered. Then, 
seeming to imagine that there was some treachery 
to herself in this dreadful and inexplicable per- 
formance, she drew nearer, with a menacing growl. 
The next instant, as if quite beside herself at the 
sight of such contortions, she gave vent to a mad 
screech and flung herself at Gray Lynx's throat. 

In a moment the two became, as it were, one 
ball of clinging, tearing, screeching fur and claws. 
They rolled over and over in the snow, the heavy 
trap striking them both impartially, the chain now 
entangling them, now flying loose with a sharp 
jangle. Blood spattered in every direction, amid 
spurts of snow and flecks of torn fur. But Gray 
Lynx, hampered by trap and chain, and weakened 
alike by terror of the unknown and horror at the 
incomprehensible fury of his mate, was over- 



GRAY LYNX'S LAST HUNTING 251 

matched from the first. In a few minutes the 
tense ball seemed to loosen. The maniacal uproar 
ceased to affront the night, diminishing to a pant- 
ing growl. Gray Lynx's body straightened out. 
The female continued to worry it for a few mo- 
ments. Then, as if suddenly coming to her 
senses, she stopped, drew off, eyed the mangled 
and twitching form, and slunk away into the 
nearest bushes. Here she crouched, as if in 
terror, and peered out fascinated. At last the 
shape of what had once been her mate lay quite still. 
Then, after a little, she crept away, hid herself in 
a remote thicket, and fell to licking her scars and 
cleansing her fur. And the outstretched body of 
Gray Lynx, with cruel eyes half open and staring 
blankly, stiffened little by little in the still, im- 
placable frost. 



MOTHERS OF THE NORTH 



Mothers of the North 

IT was in the first full, ardent rush of the Arc- 
tic spring. 

Thrilling to the heat of the long, long days of 
unobstructed sun, beneath the southward-facing 
walls of the glaciers, the thin soil, clothing the 
eternal ice, burst into green and flowering life. 
In the sunward valleys brooks awoke, with a 
sudden filming of grass along their borders, a 
sudden passionate unfolding of star-like blooms, 
white, yellow, and blue. As if summoned from 
sleep by the impetuous blossoms, eager to be 
fertilized, came the small northern butterflies in 
swarms, with little wasp-like flies and beetles 
innumerable. Along the inaccessible ledges of 
the cliffs the auks and gulls, in crowded ranks, 
screamed and quarrelled over their untidy nests, 
or filled the air with wings as they flocked out 
over the gray-green, tranquil sea. The world of 
the north was trying to forget for a little the im- 
placable savagery, the deathly cold and dark, of 
its winter's torment. 

The great, unwieldy, grunting walruses felt it, 
too, and responded to it — this ardor of the 

255 



256 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

lonely Arctic spring, astray in the wastes. On 
the ledges of a rocky islet, just off shore, the 
members of a little herd were sunning them- 
selves, There were two old bulls and four cows 
with their sprawling lumps of calves. All were 
in a good humor with each other, lying with 
heads or foreflippers flung amicably across each 
other's grotesque bodies, and grunting, groaning, 
grumbling in various tones of content as the 
pungent sunlight tickled their coarse hides. All 
seemed without a care beneath the sky, except 
one of the old bulls. He, being on watch, held 
his great tusked and bewhiskered head high above 
his wallowing fellows, and kept eyes, ears, and 
nose alert for the approach of any peril. One of 
the unshapely, helpless-looking calves, with its 
mother, lay in a hollow of the rock, perhaps 
twenty feet back from the water's edge — a snug 
spot, sheltered from all winds of north and east. 
The rest of the herd were grouped so close to the 
water's edge that from time to time a lazy, leaden- 
green swell would come lipping up and splash 
them. The cubs had a tendency to flounder 
away out of reach of these chill douches ; but 
their mothers were very resolute about keeping 
them close to the water. 

Presently the little group was enlarged by one. 
Another old bull, who had been foraging at the 



MOTHERS OF THE NORTH 257 

sea-bottom, grubbing up clams, star-fish, and 
oysters with his tusks, and crushing them in the 
massive mill of his grinders, suddenly shot his 
ferocious-looking head above the surface. For 
all his gross bulk, in the water he moved with 
almost the speed and grace of a seal. In a second 
he was at the rock's edge. Hooking his immense 
tusks over it, he drew himself up by the force of 
his mighty neck, flung forward a broad flipper, 
dragged himself out of the water, and flopped 
down among his fellows with an explosive grunt 
of satisfaction. 

They were not, it must be confessed, a very 
attractive company, these uncouth sea-cattle. The 
adults were from ten to eleven feet in length, 
round and swollen-looking as hogsheads, quite 
lacking the adornment of tails, and in color 
of a dirty yellow-brown. Sparse bristles, scat- 
tered over their hides in rusty patches, gave 
them a disreputable, moth-eaten look. Their 
short but powerful flippers were ludicrously 
splayed. They had the upper half of the head 
small, flat-skulled, and earless ; while the lower 
half, or muzzle, was enormously developed to 
support the massive, downward-growing tusks, 
twelve to fifteen inches in length. This gro- 
tesque enlargement of the lower jaw was further 
emphasized by the bristling growth of long stiff 



258 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

whiskers which decorated it, giving the wearer an 
air of blustering irascibility. As for the calves, 
their podgy little forms had the same over-blown 
look as those of their parents, but their clean 
young hides were not so wrinkled, nor were they 
anywhere disfigured by lumps and scars. They 
were without tusks, of course, but the huge de- 
velopment of their muzzles, in preparation for the 
sprouting of the tusks, gave them a truculent 
air that was ludicrously belied by the mildness 
of their baby eyes. They rolled and snuggled 
against the mountainous flanks of their mothers, 
who watched them with vigilant devotion. The 
calf which lay farthest inland, apart from the rest, 
was in some pain, and whimpering. That morn- 
ing it had got a nasty prod in the shoulder from 
the horn of a passing narwhal, and the anxious 
mother was trying to comfort it, gathering it 
clumsily but tenderly against her side and coax- 
ing it to nurse. The rest of the herd, for the 
moment, was utterly content with life ; but the 
troubled mother was too much engrossed with her 
little one's complaints to notice how caressing was 
the spring sun. 

Meanwhile, not far away, was another mother 
who, in spite of the spring, was equally ill-content. 
Down to the shore of the mainland, behind the 
island, came prowling a lean white bear with a cub 



MOTHERS OF THE NORTH 259 

close at her heels. The narrow bay between island 
and mainland was full of huge ice-cakes swung in 
by an eddy of the tides. Many of these wave- 
eaten and muddied floes were piled up on the 
shore along tide-mark, and as their worn edges 
softened under the downpour of the sun, they 
crumbled and fell with small glassy crashes. 
Hither and thither among them stole the fierce- 
eyed mother, hoping to find some dead fish or 
other edible drift of the sea. She had had bad 
hunting of late — the shoals of the salmon had 
been inexplicably delaying their appearance on 
the coast — and she was feeling the pangs of 
famine. To be sure, she was filling her stomach, 
after a fashion, with the young shoots of rushes 
and other green stuff, but this was not the diet 
which Nature had framed her for. And in her 
lack of right nourishment she was pouring her 
very life itself into her breasts, in the effort to 
feed her little one. He, too, was suffering, so 
scanty was the supply of mother's milk. Even 
now, as the great bear stopped to nose a mass of 
seaweed, the cub crowded under her flank and 
began to nurse, whimpering with disappointment 
at the too thin stream he drew. Her fierce eyes 
filmed, and she turned her head far round in 
order to lick him tenderly. 

The stranded ice-floes yielded nothing that a 



260 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

bear could eat, and she was ranging on down the 
shore, disconsolately, when all at once a waft of 
air drew in from seaward. It came direct from 
the island, and it brought the scent of walrus. 
She lifted her long, black-edged muzzle and 
sniffed sharply, then stood as rigid as one of the 
ice-cakes, and searchingly scrutinized the island. 
The cub, either imitating his mother or obeying 
some understood signal, stood moveless also. 
One of the earliest lessons learned by the young- 
sters of the wild is to keep still. 

There was not a walrus in sight, but the bear's 
nostrils could not deceive her. She knew the 
huge sea-beasts were there, on the other side of 
the island, and she knew they would be very 
much at ease on such a day as this, basking in 
the sun. Walruses were not the quarry she 
would have chosen. The great bulls, courageous 
and hot-tempered, the powerful cows, dauntless 
as herself in defence of their young — she knew 
them for antagonists to be avoided whenever pos- 
sible. But just now she had no choice. Her 
cub was not getting food enough. To her there 
was nothing else in the world so important as 
that small, troublesome, droll-eyed, hungry cub. 

Keeping herself now well out of sight behind 
the ice-floes, with the cub close at her heels, she 
stole down to the edge of the retreating tide. 



MOTHERS OF THE NORTH 261 

The bay was too crowded with slowly-moving 
floes to be quite as safe for the cub as she would 
have had it, but she could not leave him behind. 
She kept him close at her side as she swam. He 
was a good swimmer, diving fearlessly when she 
dived, his little black nose cutting the gray-green 
water bravely and swiftly. In everything he imi- 
tated her stealth, her speed, her vigilance, for he 
knew there was big game in this hunting. 

The island was a ridge of some elevation, shelv- 
ing down by ledges to the sea. The white bear 
knew better than to climb the ridge and try to 
steal down upon the walruses. She was well 
aware that they would be keenly on the watch 
against any approach from the landward side. 
From that direction came all they feared. When 
she arrived at the island, she swam along, close 
under shelter of the shore, till she reached the 
extremity. Then, behind the shelter of a stranded 
floe, she drew herself out, at the same time flat- 
tening herself to the rock till she seemed a part of 
it. Every movement the cub copied assiduously. 
But when she rose upon her haunches, and laid 
her narrow head in a cleft of the ice-floe to peer 
over, he kept himself in the background and 
watched her with his head cocked anxiously to 
one side. 

The walruses were in full view, not fifty yards 



262 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

away. For all the pangs of her hunger, the 
mother bear never stirred, but remained for long 
minutes watching them, studying the approaches, 
while the scent of them came on the light breeze 
to her nostrils. She saw that the herd itself was 
inaccessible, being well guarded and close to the 
water. If she should try to rush them, they 
would escape at the first alarm ; or if she should 
succeed in catching one of the cubs in the 
water, she would be overwhelmed in a moment 

— caught by those mighty tusks, dragged to the 
bottom, drowned and crushed shapeless. But 
with gleaming eyes she noted |the cow and calf 
lying further up the slope. Here was her chance 

— a dangerous one enough, but still a chance. 
She dropped down at last to all fours, crouched 
flat, and began worming her way upward among 
the rocks, making a covert of the smallest hum- 
mock or projection. The cub still followed her. 

It was miraculous how small the great white 
beast managed to make herself as she slowly crept 
up upon her quarry. Her movements were as 
noiseless as a cat's. They had need to be, indeed, 
for the hearing of the walrus is keen. There was 
not a sound upon the air but the heavy breathings 
and gruntings of the herd, and the occasional 
light tinkle and crash of crumbling ice. 

At a distance of not more than twenty paces 



MOTHERS OF THE NORTH 263 

from the prey, the old bear stopped and gave a 
quick backward glance at her cub. Instantly the 
latter stopped also, and crouched warily behind 
a rock. Then his mother crept on alone. She 
knew that he was quite agile enough to avoid the 
floundering rush of any walrus, but with him she 
would take no risks. 

Suddenly, as if some premonition of peril had 
smitten her, the mother walrus lifted her head and 
stared about her anxiously. There was no danger 
in sight, but she had grown uneasy. She lowered 
her head against her calf's plump flank, and started 
to push him down the slope toward the rest of the 
herd. 

Not a dozen feet away, an enormous form, 
white and terrible, arose as if by magic out of the 
bare rocks. A bellow of warning came from the 
vigilant old bull down below. But in the same 
instant that white mass fell upon the cringing calf, 
and smashed its neck before it knew what was 
happening. 

With a roar the mother walrus reared herself 
and launched her huge bulk straight forward upon 
the enemy. She was swift in her attack — amaz- 
ingly so — but the white bear was swifter. With 
astonishing strength and deftness, even in the 
moment of delivering that fatal blow,she had pushed 
the body of her prey aside, several feet up the 



264 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

slope. At the same time, bending her long back 
like a bow, she succeeded in evading the full force 
of the mother's assault, which otherwise would 
have pinned her down and crushed her. She 
caught, however, upon one haunch, a glancing 
blow from those descending tusks, which came 
down like pile-drivers ; and a long red mark leaped 
into view upon her white fur. The next moment 
she had dragged the prey beyond reach of the 
frantic mother's next plunging charge. 

The rocky slope was now in an uproar. The 
other cows had instantly rolled their startled young 
into the sea, and were tumbling in after them with 
terrific splashing. The three bulls, grunting 
furiously, were floundering in great loose plunges 
up the slope, eager to get into the fray. The be- 
reaved mother was gasping and snorting with her 
prodigious efforts, as she hurled herself in huge 
sprawling lunges after the slayer of her young. So 
agile was she proving herself, indeed, that the bear 
had enough to do in keeping out of her reach, while 
half lifting, half dragging the prize up the incline. 

At last the body of the calf caught in a crevice, 
and the bear had to pause to wrench it free. It 
was for a moment only, but that moment came 
very near being her last. She felt, rather than 
saw, the impending mass of the cow as it reared 
itself above her. Like a spring suddenly loosed, 



MOTHERS OF THE NORTH 265 

she bounded aside, and those two straight tusks 
came down, just where she had stood, with the 
force of a ton of bone and muscle behind them. 

Wheeling in a flash to follow up her assault, the 
desperate cow reared again. But this time she 
was caught at a disadvantage. Her far more 
intelligent adversary had slipped around behind 
her, and now, as she reared, struck her a tremen- 
dous buffet on the side of the neck. Caught off 
her balance, the cow rolled down the slope, turn- 
ing clean over before she could recover her 
footing. The three bulls, in the midst of their 
floundering charge up the hill, checked themselves 
for a moment to see how she had fared. And in 
that moment the bear succeeded in dragging her 
prize up a steep where the walruses could not 
hope to follow. A few yards more, and she had 
gained a spacious ledge some twenty feet above 
the raging walruses. A second or two later, in 
answer to her summons, the cub joined her there, 
scrambling nimbly over the rocks at a safe distance 
from the foe. 

Realizing now that the marauder had quite 
escaped their vengeance, the three bulls at length 
turned away, and went floundering and snorting 
back to the sea. The mother, however, inconsol- 
able in her rage and grief, kept rearing herself 
against the face of the rock, clawing at it impo- 



266 NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN 

tently with her great flippers, and striking it with 
her tusks till it seemed as if they must give way 
beneath the blows. Again and again she fell back, 
only to renew her futile and pathetic efforts the 
moment she could recover her breath. And from 
time to time the old bear, nursing the cub, would 
glance down upon her with placid unconcern. 
At last, coming in some sort to her senses, the 
unhappy cow turned away and crawled heavily, 
with a slowjerky motion, down the slope. Slowly, 
and with a mighty splash, she launched herself 
into the sea, and swam off to join the rest of the 
herd a mile out from shore. 



' I ^HE following pages contain advertisements of books 
A by the same author or on kindred subjects. 



By Charles G. D. Roberts 
THE BACKWOODSMEN 

Illustrated Cloth i2mo $1.30 

•"The Backwoodsmen' shows that the writer knows the backwoods 
as the sailor knows the sea. Indeed, his various studies of wild life 
in general, whether cast in the world of short sketch or story or full- 
length narrative, have always secured an interested public. . . . Mr. 
Roberts possesses a keen artistic sense which is especially marked 
when he is rounding some story to its end. There is never a word 
too much, and he invariably stops when the stop should be made. 
. . . Few writers exhibit such entire sympathy with the nature of 
beasts and birds as he." — Boston Herald. 

" When placed by the side of the popular novel, the strength of these 
stories causes them to stand out like a huge primitive giant by the 
side of a simpering society miss, and while the grace and beauty of 
the girl may please the eye for a moment, it is to the rugged strength 
of the primitive man your eyes will turn to glory in his power and 
simplicity. In simple, forceful style Mr. Roberts takes the reader 
with him out into the cold, dark woods, through blizzards, stalking 
game, encountering all the dangers of the backwoodsmen's life, and 
enjoying the close contact with Nature in all her moods. His descrip- 
tions are so vivid that you can almost feel the tang of the frosty air, 
the biting sting of the snowy sleet beating on your face, you can hear 
the crunch of the snow beneath your feet, and when, after heartlessly 
exposing you to the elements, he lets you wander into camp with the 
characters of the story, you stretch out and bask in the warmth and 
cheer of the fire." — Western Review, 



KINGS IN EXILE 

Illustrated Cloth i2tno $1.30 

" More wonderful animal tales such as only Mr. Roberts can relate. 
With accurate knowledge of the exiled beasts and a vivid imagination, 
the author writes stories that are even more than usually interest- 
ing. The antagonistic feelings that exist beneath the shaggy coats, 
and the methods of stealthy warfare of wild beasts, are all minutely 
described and the enemies illustrated." — Book News Monthly. 

" It is surprising how much of the wilderness his wistful eye discovers 
in a Central Park buffalo yard. For this gift of vision the book will 
be read, a vision with its reminder of the scent of dark forests of fir, 
the awful and majestic loneliness of sky-towering peaks, the roar of 
the breakers and salty smell of the sea, the whispering silences of the 
forests. We rise from its pages with the breath of the open spaces in 
our lungs." — Boston Transcript. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



Ernest Ingersoll's 
LIFE OF ANIMALS: THE MAMMALS 

Colored Plates and Photographic Illustrations 

Cloth 8vo $2.00 net 

"An exceedingly entertaining and informing book containing the 
latest information concerning the whole group of mammals, that 
branch of animal creation most interesting to man because he is one 
himself. There are numberless works on this topic or related ones, 
but we know of none that is so comprehensive as this in a single 
volume. . . . There is an amazing amount of information written 
simply but with authority. Every man, woman, and child who takes 
up this book will hate to put it down for a moment." — Philadelphia 
Inquirer, 

Frederic L. Paxson's 

THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Illustrated Cloth i2tno $z.jo net 

" It has remained for Professor Frederic L. Paxson to give us the 
best tales of the Indian frontier — that region which has given to our 
history so many stirring chapters. ' The Last American Frontier ' 
combines the educational quality of historical accuracy, the tense 
interest of ' dime-novel ' fiction, and the charm of artistic literary 
workmanship. This is a book for all the family — the young and the 
old." — Leslie's Weekly. 

Joseph A. Altsheler's 

HORSEMEN OF THE PLAINS 

Illustrated Cloth 8vo $1.30 

" ' Horsemen of the Plains,' by Joseph Altsheler, is a story of the 
West, of Indians, of scouts, trappers, fur traders, and, in short, of 
everything that is dear to the imagination of a healthy American 
boy." — New York Sun. 

"A stirring story of hunting and exploring in the years when the 
Rocky Mountains were the Far West and when those regions were 
still the battle ground between the white man and the red. 'The 
Horsemen' are the whimsical, canny, brave, kind old scouts, who 
adopt Bob, the boy hero, into their circle and father him in his first 
trip into the mountains after valuable furs. There is a great deal of 
outdoor life in the book and much which displays the ingenuity of the 
successful hunter." — Minneapolis Tribune. 



PUBLISHED BY 

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64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



Lieut.-Col. J. H. Patterson's 

IN THE GRIP OF THE NYIKA 

Illustrated Cloth 8vo $2.00 net 
" Nyika merely means wilderness, and its grip is conveyed very 
forcefully to the pages of Colonel Patterson's book, which holds the 
reader as closely as the Nyika holds those who venture into it. . . . 
Colonel Patterson has a particularly interesting way of describing 
things he sees. . . . The whole volume is filled with exciting inci- 
dents and many illustrations from photographs of odd animals and 
queer people." — Boston Transcript. 

THE MAN-EATERS OF TSAVO 
AND OTHER EAST AFRICAN 
ADVENTURES 

With Foreword by Mr. Frederick C. Selous 

Illustrated Cloth 8vo $2.00 net 
" The account of how Colonel Patterson overcame the many diffi- 
culties that confronted him in building his bridge across the Tsavo 
River makes excellent reading, while the courage he displayed in 
attacking, single-handed, lions, as well as rhinoceroses and other 
animal foes, was surpassed by his pluck, tact, and determination in 
quelling a formidable mutiny which once broke out among his native 
workers.' ' — New York Herald. 

Theodore S. Van Dyke's 
THE STILL HUNTER 

Illustrated Cloth 8vo $1.75 net 
" A vivid account of the most exciting sport in the world. . . . The 
record of years of experience. ... It is crammed full of valuable 
advice for the deer hunter, and has the advantage of having been 
written before hunting became more of a pastime than a serious 
business, requiring untiring energy, great patience, cool nerves, and 
perfect sight." — Chicago Tribune. 

Edwyn Sandys' 

SPORTING SKETCHES cioth i2mo $i. 75 net 

"Mr. Sandys is a real sportsman with a wide experience, and he 
writes agreeably and without effort to make his work unusual or 
picturesque. It is just the sort of description you would expect from 
a man who had really done the things narrated. . . . He describes 
in such manner that even one who has never held gun or rod cannot 
but partake of something of the writer's enthusiasm." — Chicago 
Tribune. 

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OUTDOOR STORIES FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 



By J. W. Fortescue 

THE STORY OF A RED DEER 

Cloth, i6mo, $.80; Leather, $1.25 

By Jack London 
TALES OF THE FISH PATROL 

Illustrated by G. Varian Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 

By Charles Major 

THE BEARS OF BLUE RIVER 

Illustrated by A. B. Frost Cloth, izmo, $1.30 

UNCLE TOM ANDY BILL 

Illustrated. Cloth, i2tno, $1.50 

By Edwyn Sandys 
SPORTSMAN JOE 

Illustrated, izmo, $1.50 

TRAPPER JIM 

Illustrated. i2mo, $1.50 

By Ernest Ingersoll 

AN ISLAND IN THE AIR 

Illustrated by William McCullough Cloth, i2mo $1.50 

By Stewart Edward White 
THE MAGIC FOREST 

Colored Illustrations by Joseph Gleeson Cloth, l2mo, $1.20 net 

By Mabel Osgood Wright 
DOGTOWN 

Illustrated with Photographs Cloth, l2mo, $1.50 net 

GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 

Colored Illustrations Cloth, i2mo, $1.75 net 

PUBLISHED BY 

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jan 12 nit 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



12 1S1I 



